~ luka.kladaric.net ~

[Update: this method is obsolete, check out my new post, titled ‘Screw you, Adobe!‘ for a better solution]

I don’t know about you, but my Firefox goes berserk when I try to close (that’s right, not open, but close) the tab that is being used to display a PDF file through the default PDF plugin. It gobbles up 100% of my CPU and takes ages to close (and I’m talking minutes here… close to 10 minutes at some times)… This often drives me nuts, so I put it out of it’s misery by killing the process in the task manager… The downside is - I’ve lost all my open tabs, and I don’t have photographic memory.

I now unleash upon the world the news that I have found a fix to this agonizing problem, once and for all… I was foolish to think the problems could be solved in Firefox.. After careful examination of the problem at hand (aka after 30 minutes of googling), I found a hint that the path to heaven was hidden in the devil’s own - Adobe Acrobat.

Save your souls, reclaim the web and show that nasty Adobe just who runs the show around here. Follow these simple steps:

1) Open up Adobe Reader (the product formerly known as Adobe Acrobat Reader or Acrobat Reader). I’m using version 6, so these instructions are based on it.
2) Go to the Edit menu and select Preferences.
3) Choose the Internet section and uncheck ‘Display PDF in browser’. I also unchecked the second option, ‘Check browser settings…’, but I have no idea if that makes any difference.
4) Click OK
5) Close Adobe Reader
6) Close Firefox (if open)
7) That’s all, folks!

Following these simple steps cured PDFitis and my Firefox is now breathing normally. When I click a link that points to a PDF file, I get the standard download file dialog. Whoopie!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 4th, 2005 at 21:24 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.