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[SOLVED] [Firefox 19] How do I get Firefox to display local PDF files?

  • 5 replies
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  • 6 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

y9yjRQcg7F
y9yjRQcg7F
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When I first installed Firefox 19, the PDF viewer worked so well that I uninstalled Adobe Reader. Today, after a system update, Firefox stopped displaying local PDFs. If I open a PDF directly from a website, the internal PDF viewer activates and the PDF is displayed properly. However, if I open a PDF from my hard drive, Firefox just displays a mass of jumbled characters and the internal PDF viewer does not activate.

Here is a screenshot of the behavior: http://i.imgur.com/5Of0kUH.png

I tried running in safe mode and the behavior persisted. I really hope there is a fix for this because using Firefox for viewing PDFs really makes my workflow much better.

EDIT -- SOLUTION IN REPLY

When I first installed Firefox 19, the PDF viewer worked so well that I uninstalled Adobe Reader. Today, after a system update, Firefox stopped displaying local PDFs. If I open a PDF directly from a website, the internal PDF viewer activates and the PDF is displayed properly. However, if I open a PDF from my hard drive, Firefox just displays a mass of jumbled characters and the internal PDF viewer does not activate. Here is a screenshot of the behavior: http://i.imgur.com/5Of0kUH.png I tried running in safe mode and the behavior persisted. I really hope there is a fix for this because using Firefox for viewing PDFs really makes my workflow much better. EDIT -- SOLUTION IN REPLY

Modified by y9yjRQcg7F

Chosen solution

SOLUTION

  1. In terminal, type: # firefox -ProfileManager
  2. Create new profile.
  3. Start with said profile.
  4. Fixed. Internal PDF viewer will now work in either profile.
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All Replies (5)

y9yjRQcg7F
y9yjRQcg7F Question owner
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Chosen Solution

SOLUTION

  1. In terminal, type: # firefox -ProfileManager
  2. Create new profile.
  3. Start with said profile.
  4. Fixed. Internal PDF viewer will now work in either profile.

Modified by y9yjRQcg7F

John99
John99
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This is relatively new. There will be issues, and I believe some bugs are scheduled to be fixed in later Firefox versions.

Problems of this type may conceivably only show on certain files. I have checked and I may open and view local pdfs in Firefox. (Using fx21.0a2 canonical on Ubuntu 12.04 )

Try a selection of files from different sources. If you use pdf s a lot the Firefox viewer alone may not suffice.

John99
John99
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Not sure I understand that.

A new profile may fix a problem, but how/why does that fix the original profile.

Never mind, glad it works, & thanks for posting back.

y9yjRQcg7F
y9yjRQcg7F Question owner
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@John99:

This problem was very specific. I have hundreds of PDFs on my local hard drive. Firefox was behaving that way every single time I tried to open any and all PDFs from my hard drive. However, it never failed to open correctly when I was opening a PDF from a website.

Anyway, it seems bizarre to me that creating a new profile would fix the problem since I had tried safe mode, and it didn't work. Even more bizarre is the fact that going back to the old profile proves the problem is fixed there as well. I have no idea why this worked, I just know that it did.

Modified by y9yjRQcg7F

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
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This can probably be fixed by deleting the mimeTypes.rdf file in the Firefox profile folder.