PDF Viewer Control

[Rick]

Does anyone know of an ASP.net control that will allow viewing a pdf file?
Without streaming the file to the browser. I have to display a pdf without
the pdf being stored on the web server and also not have the user prompted
for a download.

Thanks in advance,
Rick

 

[Jon Paal [MSMD]]

If the information is not sent to the browser how will it work ?

 

[John Timney \(MVP\)]

Your requirements make no sense. If you can't send it to the browser, how
would you expect the viewer to see it.

The easiest option is to stick it in an iframe - but they can still chose to
set their browser to prompt for all files if thats what they want to have
happen.

Regards

John Timney (MVP)
http://www.johntimney.com
http://www.johntimney.com/blog

 

[Rick]

I was hoping to get a control that would sit on a web page and be able to
stream the pdf into the control. I know it has to display in a browser, but
streaming directly to the browser forces the download prompt.And I'm not
given the option from people higher up to make changes or force users to
make the changes on the client side.

 

[Andy]

If you download and install the adobe acrobat pdf viewer, you won't be
prompted whether to save or download a pdf file that was obtained by
clicking a link on the browser - the file will download and
automatically open in acrobat (this also holds true if the link was
initiated via javascript).

If you do have acrobat installed, but are still getting the download
prompt, then the .pdf file extension probably isn't associated with
acrobat on the windows OS you are using. Re-installing acrobat should
fix this.

You can also stream files using XMLHTTP, however, this will also
require you to weaken security settings on your browser that would
enable ADODB.scritping and the scripting.filesystemobject active X
controls, opening you to internet attacks.

I don't think there is a native ASP.NET control that ships with visual
studio that allows you to view pdf files.

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Rick,

For viewing PDF document in web page, it totally depend on the PDF viewer
installed on client machine. So it is necessary to insure that the client
has installed the PDF viewer software(unless you're using activex control
for pdf viewing so that client need to download and install your activex
component). Also, for whether client will prompt for open dialog, it depend
on your client machine's explorer setting. You can configure it through the
following steps:

1. open windows explorer

2. Tools ---> folder options---> File Types

3. choose the "PDF" extension and in the "Advanced" setting, you can find
the "confirm open after download" checkbox option.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



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[Tamas Demjen]

I was hoping to get a control that would sit on a web page and be able to
stream the pdf into the control. I know it has to display in a browser, but
streaming directly to the browser forces the download prompt.And I'm not
given the option from people higher up to make changes or force users to
make the changes on the client side.

If your problem is that you don't want the user to wait for the entire
file to download, then I have good news for you. The Adobe Reader
browser plugin has a feature that allows you to stream the PDF page by
page on demand. The users would only have to wait for the first page to
load, and they could start navigating right away. This requires that you
first optimize your PDF for the web, also known as linearization. Go to
pdfzone.com and see if you can find a command line tool that converts an
existing PDF file into a byte-servable linearized one. If you host that,
Adobe Reader will fetch it page by page as the user is scrolling. Once
again, this won't work unless you get a tool that linearizes the PDF
first, or save it that way from Acrobat.

Tom