Adobe Reader won't open as freestanding program, only in browser
This has been going on for a while, perhaps since the upgrade to Lion OS. I understand that I need to open Adobe Reader and uncheck the instruction to open in a browser. However, when I click on Adobe Reader app the icon appears in the dock bar at the bottom of my screen, but this doesn't give me access to either settings or preferences; when I double click on it to open the program window, nothing happens that I can tell. It's like a catch 22, where I can't get to where I want to go from here... What can I do to get out of this vicious circle? The immediate issue is that a PDF ebook file will not open with the correct formatting in Firefox, and in Safari all I get is the first of 100 or so pages! Tech support at the PDF file's server has attempted to duplicate my problem on a Macbook Pro in both Firefox and Safari, and reports that their formatting is perfect...the problem resides only on my machine. I have deleted the downloaded copy of the PDF file, then redownloaded it; no improvement. I have uninstalled Adobe Reader, redownloaded and reinstalled it, checked for updates, rebooted; no improvement. By the way, Mozilla reports an instability problem with one of Adobe Reader's components, and has disabled it in Firefox; when I re-enable it and try to open a PDF file in Firefox, all I get is a blank page; behavior that corresponds with the problem documentation.
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Mac and Office updates all current