Adobe! The little car that's made out of clay!

June 18, 2005 9:03 PM

Lately when I attempt to view web-based .pdf files, I get nothing but a blank screen. I am running Firefox 0.9.3 with Adobe Reader 7.0. Any suggestions?
posted by LilBucner to Technology (8 answers total)

Dump 7.0 and go back to 6.0. or even 5.0.
posted by I EAT TAPES at 9:08 PM on June 18, 2005

Best answer: 1. Uninstall Adobe.
2. Upgrade Firefox to 1.0.4 already, forpetesake
2a. You'll need to uninstall 0.9.3 and follow instructions for importing an existing profile but you should be able to use it
2b. If this doesn't work you may have to create a new profile
3. Reinstall Adobe
posted by dhartung at 9:24 PM on June 18, 2005

7.0 is fine (6.0 sucked). If you mean that there appears to be nothing in the document, make sure you have "display large images" checked in "preferences." This drove me nuts trying to view scanned files.

But do update Firefox.
posted by words1 at 9:39 PM on June 18, 2005

Response by poster: update: i did as dhartung suggested and it worked. thank you!
posted by LilBucner at 10:05 PM on June 18, 2005

And get PDF speedup to make your Acroread experience suck less. (Keep the executable around so you can reverse the process if you come across a PDF that actually uses the features this disables.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:10 PM on June 18, 2005

I've switched (on Windows) to Foxit's tiny, fast, and free PDF reader. It loads instantaneously, much faster even than a stripped down Adobe Reader (either stripped down manually or automated via PDF Speedup that Zed_Lopez linked). I hate PDF (it's an OK format for stuff to be printed but otherwise it sucks vigorously) but Foxit's elegant little program alleviates some of the pain.
posted by TimeFactor at 11:04 PM on June 18, 2005

Another vote for FoxIt. Made PDFs a lot more palatable all around.
posted by spartacusroosevelt at 11:29 PM on June 18, 2005

yup, Foxit. Foxit foxit foxit.
posted by blag at 12:33 PM on June 19, 2005