Can't view XFA Forms within Firefox on Mac- shows a blank white screen.
The XFA forms embedded in our website generated using Adobe Live cycle are not rendering correctly in Firefox browser on Mac OS. We are not sure if this is an inherent issue with Firefox on Mac OS or if we need any special settings in Firefox browser to get this to work. We have found a few links on the internet so far that seem to indicate that the Adobe Reader plugin on Mac OS is not supported for Firefox browser.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-adobe-reader-plugin-view-or-download-pdf-files - This link has a line that states – “Adobe does not yet maintain a browser plugin for viewing PDF files in Firefox on Mac OS X; instead, you can use the built-in PDF Viewer. “
I even tried running Firefox in 32 bit mode but it didn't help. I wanted to know if our XFA forms can't work on Firefox on Mac. It works with Safari though. I tried setting the action to open pdf files within Firefox using 'Adobe Acrobat NPAPI Plug-in', but the below article indicates this plug-in doesn't work with Firefox. Our forms need to work with adobe plug-in due to the proprietary technology used in those. Same webpage works with Firefox on Windows platform.
This link seems to suggest that on Mac OS only Safari browser is supported by Adobe- http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/tech-specs.html
I am looking for a confirmation from Firefox experts that this is indeed a limitation.
All Replies (5)
I forgot to put the URL about Adobe Acrobat NPAPI Plug-in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pdf-files-are-blank-or-cause-error-message-mac
The latest stable and latest development versions of the built-in PDF viewer are available as an extension and these version can possibly perform better than the version shipped with the current Firefox release.
So you can try one of those to see if it has already been fixed in a future Firefox version.
Latest development version of the PDF Viewer (pdfjs) extension:
Latest stable version of the PDF Viewer (pdfjs) extension:
It might be best to use Preview for PDF documents on Mac if the built-in PDF Viewer isn't working.
Thank you. I will try the extension you provided. But our pdf will most likely not work with Firefox's pdf viewer.
I am trying to view the pdf using adobe plug-in. And I wanted a confirmation if adobe provides a plug-in for Firefox on Mac. Please refer to the links I provided in my post.
The Adobe plugin for Firefox is probably still not working properly with Firefox, so you would have to make sure to open PDF file in the external PDF viewer and not embedded in Firefox.
See:
PDF files may be found under entries like Portable document or Adobe PDF document or Adobe Acrobat Document.
- Firefox > Preferences > Applications > Adobe PDF document : Use Adobe Reader
I should have been more clear on this-
Our requirement is to open the editable pdf within the browser itself. We are not just trying to render the editable pdf, but providing a functionality for the user to update the pdf and save it via an action on html page. This means, the pdf has to be opened within browser for html to pdf communication to happen. Our requirement will be fulfilled only if the XFA form opens within the browser. And the reason we want the pdf to open using the plug-in is because of the fact that our forms have proprietary adobe technology which works only with adobe plug-in.
Appreciate for the quick responses so far. Would you recommend checking this with adobe? I am interested in validating the statement "Adobe does not yet maintain a browser plugin for viewing PDF files in Firefox on Mac OS X; instead, you can use the built-in PDF Viewer." that is mentioned in this post- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-adobe-reader-plugin-view-or-download-pdf-files