How to detect if Acrobat plug-in is installed

[cinolas]

Hi,

We have a bunch of PDF on our web site. When the user has Acrobat Reader installed, no problem the PDF opens as it's supposed to.

When the user doesn't have Acrobat Reader installed:

On a PC : It asks either to open from location or save to disk, then it asks the user what to open the file with...

On a Mac : It does nothing ! Like if the link wasn't working.

We would like to be able to detect if the Acrobat Reader plugin is installed and, if not, give the user an error message with a link to dowload Acrobat Reader.

Any idea on how to do that ?

 

[ssnapier]

Well if you tried that with me it would not work... I have Acrobat installed, but I changed the settings to NOT integrate with my browser. I have found that plugin to be very unreliable, .pdf files still open, they just open in the program itself... much better IMHO

 

[cinolas]

Ya but in your case I would not be worried, i'm sure you can figure out how to download a pdf and view it...

I'm aiming at total user friendlyness for our many customers that don't know much about computers. I want to avoid the support call saying :"it's not working" because nothing happens (on a mac) when you click the link or "none of my programs will open the document !" on a PC.

Is'nt there a way to catch a plugin error ?
Kind of like when there is flash on a page but you do not have the plugin installed, it refers you to the download page right away... But if I'm correct that's done using the pluginpage parameter of the OBJECT/EMBED tags which are usually used with content and not links....

If you know a way of using this kind of effect with a link ?

Any idea ?