Viewing PDFs in Firefox

We seem to be having a number of issues with Adobe Reader/Acrobat and I've got a few tickets in to ITS about them. There's one though that could potentially cause some issues with our databases. It seems that many, if not all, computers are downloading PDF files instead of allowing them to be viewed in the browser when using Firefox.

I've found a temporary workaround for this but it will be on a user by user basis.

Go to Options in Firefox. This will either be located under the rectangular Firefox button in the upper left of the screen or under the Tools menu in Firefox.

When the window pops up, go to the Applications tab.

Look for either Adobe Acrobat Document and/or Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Document.

Make sure it is set to "Use Adobe Acrobat (in Firefox)".

You can try this fix on your own login as well, if you'd like to try it out before you need to help a student with it.

If this doesn't fix the problem please let Heidi or myself know so we can either try to identify if it's one of the other known problems or something new that needs to be reported.

Aimee

Blackboard pdf link not working?

If a student comes to the desk complaining that they click a link for their reading on Blackboard and a tab opens but then closes and nothing else happens please check to see if they are using Firefox.  If they are, Firefox is blocking pop-ups.  The way to fix this is to go to the menu in the top left-hand part of the screen, then select options, then select content tab, then go to the area about pop-ups and select the exceptions button, put the blackboard website in there.  That should fix it!

Let me know if you have any problems,
Heidi

Internet Explorer Compatibility and Firefox Fix

We're starting to receive reports from some students that the version of Internet Explorer on campus computers is too old to support some websites, especially Google products like Google Docs. Students should be using the campus' officially supported Firefox browser, but many students are experiencing problems with Firefox crashing or not working.

ITS has put out a fix for the Firefox issue that seems to fix the problems in many cases, but very few students know about it and neither do the staff. If students come to you with issues with Firefox (or issues with Internet Explorer because their Firefox doesn't work), you can recommend they try to fix it with the following steps.

1. Open the icon on the desktop for Zen Works Adaptive Agent.
2. Double click on the Firefox Crash Fix.
3. Try opening Firefox again.

It may not be apparent that anything is happening when you click on Firefox Crash Fix, but it's working in the background. This has fixed the problem for most students that are experiencing issues with Firefox.