Adobe Reader not fully integrated with browser

[mungdrool]

I have an application that opens a second browser window and displays a PDF file in it. The content-type is set to "application/pdf", content-disposition is set to "inline; fielname=Certificate.pdf", but on some machines I still get a prompt that informs the user he must save the file to his local machine before it opens. It will then download the file and give them another prompt that gives them open or save options. If they select open, it opens in Acrobat Reader, not the browser. This same code is running on two different web server machines, but it only acts this way on one of them. In other words, if the user downloads the pdf from webserver1, it just opens the file in a second window, if they open it from webserver2 it goes through the prompt, save, open path before it displays. It always opens in an acrobat window rather than an IE window.

The users have their "Display PDF in browser" option checked in acroboat, so I'm not sure why it never brings it up in the browser, but that may be a different problem.

I believe the problem is some setting on the client machine, but I can't figure out which one it is. The two webservers are in different "zones" which is why I think they act differently. Some users' machines work "correctly" while others exhibit the behavior outlined above.

Anybody have any ideas which setting could be controlling this? I've tried changing most off them on my machine and can never get it to work the same way as the users are reporting.

Thanks,
Jeff Tendam

 

[jmgalvin]

Are they all using the same browser with the Reader plugin installed and on the same platform?

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[mungdrool]

All are on the same platform (Windows XP SP2) using IE 6. As far as I can tell they are all using Adobe Reader 7.0 as well. The really weird thing is that it acts differently depending on which webserver they are getting the files from. I assume it has to do with the zone settings they have, but I can't seem to figure out which setting(s) would be causing the differences. I have noticed that the zone starts out as Trusted, but the second browser window comes up as Unknown before the file starts to download. I don't know what settings it uses if it's in the Unknown zone. I would assume it would be Internet, but I really don't know how to tell for sure.

Does this help explain the situation a little better?

 

[jmgalvin]

Off the top of my head it looks like the 2 servers have different security or whatever settings. Theoretically it should not be on client machines or they'd get one thing or the other no matter what server they hit.

If one group is ONLY accessing one server and the other group is ONLY accessing the other server, then it would be more likely, but not necessarily, on the clients.

It might be time to talk to the server admins and/or desktop admins about the problem. It could also be security settings in any security software used on clients.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[mungdrool]

Thanks for the info. I'll look into the settings on the servers. I do have a question about that, though. If it's a setting on the server, wouldn't everyone be seeing the same type of behavior when getting information from that server? That's why I thought it might be a client setting, since the same file coming from the same server reacts differently on different client machines. It could still be server settings, but it seems likely that it is a combination of server/client settings that may be causing these problems. Does that logic make sense or am I totally off base with it? I just don't want to pursue looking at client settings if there's no possibility of it being the problem.

Thanks,
Jeff Tendam