Unable to open pdf files in Safari 5.1

One more addition: I went to the Adobe site and found a link that apparently needs Adobe reader (for testing). The result of displaying it in Safari without having the said reader software nor any other PDF plug-in is shown below. If there are sites that specifically require Adobe reader and nothing else, it is a site problem and not a Safari problem.

I too have been able to display PDF's from some sites in Safari 5.1. I think some other sites specifically require the plugin and look for it.

Yes, it is a site problem, however it is definately a Safari and Apple problem as well. A web browser gains fame by being able to render, properly, any site that conforms to specifications. If it does not it just falls backwards in the ratings. Over the past few years Safari has climbed to be one of the best web browsers out there. To have not only the Adobe reader plugin, but several others all of a sudden be incompatible with Safari is a definate setback and will have many users scrambling for other browsers that do provide the features they need and want. What was the Safari development team thinking?

In my opinion Apple's development team did a great job and brings new solutions and ideas. Apparently the are too fast for others like Adobe. B.T.W. what are the specifications? And why do most sites not depend on the type/brand of the PDF plugin? Googling for "Adobe PDF test" I find not even one site that tells me "missing plugin", not even Adobe's own links to test files. They all render properly in Safari without any PDF plugin.

What the Apple team overlooked is that too many cicumstances (like still incompatible plug-ins or remainders of plist settings) can disable Safari's native PDF rendering. Such things are quite normal at the very beginning of new software. User groups take care of it at the beginning and contribute to improving the software and future releases.

Thanks for the discussions.

I can verify the problem of Safari 5.1 using Quicktime to display PDFs with only the first page showing in the window. Moving the Quicktime plugin to the Disabled folder from '/Library/Internet Plugins' fixed the issue for me. Movies still played fine.

Related: installing the Shubert plug-in worked, but Activity Monitor showed that plug-in taking upwards of 70% of the cpu and really slowing things down --- even when I had Safari in the background with no open pages.

I agree that Schubert slows things down, so any PDF of more than a few pages is quite slow to open, but it does work. Again, with that installed I can always option-click on the link to the PDF and it pops quite fast into my downloads folder. It's an annoying extra step that I didn't used to need to do, however.

What's important to me is that I opt to keep using Snow Leopard for reasons that don't belong here and I think some of the posts have wandered into opening PDFs in Safari under Lion. I'd love to go back to where I was before I updated Safari to Safari 5.1.

Thanks Janpieter.This solved my problems. Now PDF and Movies are working in Safari again after installing Lion!

(Janpieter wrote: Deleting the com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist as well as a file called "Quicktime Preferences" (not a plist) must have solved the issue.These files were in the user library which is hidden and can be accessed by holding the selection key (alt) and using the Go to menue in finder.)

Thanks for telling me!

I hope more people read my previous posts and try it. Of course it won't work if you have PDF plugin's installed (either in Macintosh HD - Library -Intenet plugins or in the user directory), they need to be disabled or deleted. If quicktime then tries to open the PDF's one can do what I proposed: delete com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist as well as a file called "Quicktime Preferences" (not a plist).

This only works for opening a PDF file in Safari (href tag). This does NOT work for an embedded PDF (iframe tag).

The first one is a link to a new page and second one loads the PDF in the existing one.

So still the only solution is the "PDF browser plugin" from Schubert.

I have not seen that so far. Could you provide sample links?

Just stick with Schubert. I personally don't like it.

I finally figured this out and fixed the problem a different way:

Open the com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist file in ~Library/Preferences with a property list editor.

Open disclosure triangle for:

"WebPluginMIMETypes";

then for "application/PDF";

uncheck the box in the "Value" column of "WebPluginTypeEnabled".

Quit and restart Safari. PDFs now show up in the browser. The contextual menu item "Open in Preview" is gone (it seems), but controls appear at the bottom of the page when the cursor crosses it and if one clicks the Preview icon, the PDF will open as a separate Preview document.

I'm sure there is a Terminal command that does the same thing, but if you have Property List Editor on your machine, it's pretty easy to do.

A new version of the Schubert-it plugin has recently been posted (version 2.4.2). Has anyone noticed if it speeds up page rendering?

Janpieter wrote:

I have not seen that so far. Could you provide sample links?

How about this one: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/iframe-pdf.html?

I do not have a problem with most .pdf files, however, I cannot open this file:

http://caise.insci.org/uploads/docs/Eval_Framework.pdf

The pages are filled with "?". WHat is especially curious is that I can open it with the Safari Browser on my iPhone. Any ideas?

Yes it seems Safari does not (yet?) support PDF's in iFrames. It downloaded the PDF's instead.

With my configuration (no PDF plugin etc.) all the pages of the PDF show correctly - here is the front page: