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Acrobat Reader detection

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2007-02-06 08:01:17
erin123
Registered: Feb 6 2007
Posts: 4

Hi,
My question is about detecting if the end user has acrobat reader installed on their computer. Is this possible to do? If so how?
 
Thanks!

My Product Information:
Reader
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2007-02-07 12:12:42
#1
tedpadova
ExpertTeam
Registered: Dec 31 2005
Posts: 848
If you write files to a CD, you can have an authorun routine detect to see if Reader is installed on a computer. In addition, the autorun script can prompt the user to install Reader if not found.

You can find shareware and third party utilities by searching for autorun and Adobe Reader on the Internet.

ted

The author of numerous books on Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator and the Adobe Creative Suite, and an international speaker on Adobe Acrobat, Ted Padova is a well-known PDF guru.

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2007-02-07 12:24:44
#2
erin123
Registered: Feb 6 2007
Posts: 4
Hi Ted,

Thank you for your quick response.
I'm sorry, I should have been more specific in my question. This is for web viewing within a browser. I had always just assumed that if a user without acrobat reader clicked on a link to a pdf (from a website) they would be prompted with a message or redirect telling them to download it. However, after uninstalling acrobat reader to try this I realized it does not automatically do this. Can this plug-in detection be done for browsers?

Thanks
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2008-06-23 03:18:02
#3
parpster
Registered: Jun 23 2008
Posts: 2
Did you ever find a solution to this?
We have the same problem. On our site we want MOST PDFs to open in a new window, if the user has the browser plug-in installed. For some PDFs or if the user doesn't have reader, we want the normal file "Save as..." dialogue.
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