Adobe and me only barely get on. Their readers keep crashing. Anyway they’ve recently upgraded their reader and in chrome it displays pdf files very much as if they are html files – rather than bringing up the clunky old reader within the browser. All very nice. But there’s a big problem – for me anyway. Now I can’t figure out how to save the pdf files. When I go to ‘save page as’ sometimes it will save a pdf file, but often it saves an html page, and that’s with a big blank on the screen (where the pdf goes). Not helpful, I think you’ll agree. I’ve also tried printing the page as a pdf using my trusty cute pdf program. But that doesn’t work – just producing a pdf of the browser page I can see before me.
Is Adobe really ‘upgrading’ its free reader to degrade its usefulness to force us to buy the full program? Somehow I suspect a stuff-up rather than a conspiracy. Can someone please enlighten me (and others) as to how to save pdf files when they open up in my browser now the dinky (and clunky) additional toolbar with a little disc icon no longer loads? I’ve had a bit of a look on the Adobe forum without success. I’m using Chrome, but expect the problem will be the same in other browsers.
That’s not an Adobe upgrade, that’s a Chrome upgrade that added a built-in PDF reader. To disable it, go to about:plugins and click Disable underneath the entry for Chrome PDF Viewer.
Wonderful James – thanks a lot. Oddly your diagnosis was correct, but your remedy had me going to the wrong menu. For me it was Options/UnderTheHood/ContentSettings/Plugins and then I couldn’t directly disable the Chrome pdf plugin. But when I went to ‘all plugins’ I could ENable the firefox/Netscape PDF plugin which did the trick. Thx again.
PS – I realise now that your command was to be written in the url bar. Then it brings up the plugins menu – and I think if I’d looked further down the page that that brings up I may have been able to disable the Chrome pdf reader, but ENabling the Firefox one worked fine.
Nicholas I can’t recommend PDF Xchange viewer enough – do away with Acrobat. If you read a lot of pdfs it is much faster and much more stable
http://download.cnet.com/PDF-XChange-Viewer/3000-10743_4-10598377.html
Second Michael S. Give it a try, Nicholas . . . . I don’t think you’ll go back.
Wow, thanks Nigel, Michael, and Nicholas. I have been having precisely the same Adobe problems as NG, but now they have all gone away.
And thanks Michael S and Ingolf – hv now tried PDF Xchange and so far a bit improvement. It always strikes me as odd that an incumbent like Adobe wouldn’t make sure they had the best software available – they’ve got so much more revenue and, as a result, so much more to lose.
Amazes me whenever I see this phenomenon. As for instance in the iPhone where Android’s browser just eats it if you need to zoom.
Are you really surprised that the browser company (amongst other things) makes a better browser than the hardware company (amongst other things)?
I’d be surprised if I made a better economist than you next week whatever the incentives, but not vice versa.