Windows opening PDF files on the web without IE

Discussion in 'Software' started by OneSeventeen, 23 Sep 2005.

  1. OneSeventeen

    OneSeventeen Oooh Shiny!

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    When I try to open an Adobe FDF file online, it works fine, firefox starts up the adobe process in the background which reads the FDF file that then says, hey adobe: here's some variables I want you to put into a PDF file that has form fields, you can find this pdf file at: http://example.com/example.pdf

    Then, my computer in turn, says, ooh, opening pdf files online, let's open Internet Explorer! (even though we are already in firefox) So now internet explorer (which as no access to the cookies/session data stored on the server) opens up the PDF, and doesn't put any the FDF data into the form, because something gets lost when we switch applications.

    The same thing happens if I just download the .fdf file onto my hard drive and open it from there, internet explorer happily tries to open up the PDF file from online and screws everything up.

    When I go to the page in internet explorer, fill out the form, and download the pdf file from there, it still askes me if I want to open or save the .fdf file, then I say "open", then it says oh, it wants to open a .pdf file, do you want to open or save this? and I click "open" agian, then it opens up adobe acrobat 6 pro (not adobe reader 7, which is the default .pdf viewer) and once again does not fill anything out in the form.

    This worked PERFECTLY until I opened up Internet Explorer one day to check cross-browser compatability of a different (non pdf using) site. Then IE decided to associate itself (on a OS level somewhere beneath all of the checkboxes and blanks I can fill out and change myself) as the default web pdf opener.

    I used to prefer Firefox for extra features, now I just hate internet explorer. The other 800 people who use this form on a daily basis are having similar issues with recent adobe upgrades and internet explorer patches. Adobe and microsoft both love to ignore my questions, anyone know how I can go about telling IE to F-off and let things work the way they did last month?
     
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