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Have you fixed, in Firefox 5, the problem that existed in Firefox 4 with not being able to view PDF files?

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  • Last reply by kerframil

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In Firefox 4 you had a bug that did not allow the viewing of PDF files. I see that you just released Firefox 5. Did Firefox 5 fix that problem?

In Firefox 4 you had a bug that did not allow the viewing of PDF files. I see that you just released Firefox 5. Did Firefox 5 fix that problem?

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Firefox does not intrinsically support PDF documents and never has. If you want to be able to read PDF documents within the context of the browser itself, install Adobe Reader. It will install a Firefox-compatible plugin intended for that purpose.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_adobe_reader/

Once Adobe Reader is installed, you can verify that the plugin is active by typing about:plugins into the address bar, followed by ENTER. You should find Adobe's plugin among the list shown.

If there is no plugin registered to handle PDF documents then Firefox will not attempt to display them. Instead, they are treated as an ordinary download and it's up to you to have an application installed that is capable of opening them in Windows.

So, you can use other PDF reader applications but, as far as I'm aware, none of them install a plugin that allows you to read a PDF directly in the browser window. If that's what you want, use Adobe Reader. The version of Firefox shouldn't matter.

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I forgot to mention that, even if the plugin is registered to handle PDF documents, it sometimes happens that Firefox does not make use of the plugin. In that case, select Options from the Firefox menu then click on the Applications icon/category and search for "Adobe Acrobat" as a document type. Ensure that "Use Adobe Reader (in Firefox)" is selected as the action.

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I did some research on this and noticed a post over at the mozillaZine forums complaining about the Reader plugin not working after an upgrade to Firefox 4.0. One user reported that upgrading the plugin fixed the problem. I notice that you are using Adobe Reader 9.4.2. I'd suggest uninstalling Adobe Reader then installing the new version using the link above. The latest version is 10.1.