This is probably really basic, but I can't figure it out.
I have a website that provides pdf's for download to users. Most often the users link straight to the PDF and let their browser open the Adobe Reader browser plug-in. Users who have slow connections see a blank screen until the reader is loaded and the file is fully downloaded. My problem is often they get impatient and close the window because there is no indication of progress.
Can the reader provide some indication of progress or can my client side code interact with the reader to determine progress? If so, how.
I have been able to embed the reader in the page using the object and embed tags. In this case, the browser displays a download progress message, but this is not obvious.
Thanks.
Do you have Fast Web View enabled for your PDFs? You can check under the Document Properties (File --> Properties under the Description tab. Fast Web View is listed at the bottom right corner. If your PDFs aren't setup for Fast Web View you can add it either with the PDF Optimizer (under Clean up) or using a Batch sequence.
Here is a brief summary of Fast Web View as detailed in the Acrobat Help:
"Fast Web View restructures a PDF document for page-at-a-time downloading (byte-serving) from web servers. With Fast Web View, the web server sends only the requested page, rather than the entire PDF. This is especially important with large documents that can take a long time to download from a server."
Also, make sure that the web server software you use supports page-at-a-time downloading.To ensure that the PDF documents on your website appear in older browsers, you may also want to create HTML links (versus ASP scripts or the POST method) to the PDF documents and use relatively short path names (256 characters or fewer).
Hope this helps,
Lori
Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.