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Author PDF download problems

2006-04-25, 7:06 pm

Some of the PDFs on our website only partially download (status bar progress
shows several hundred KB loading) for some people.

The files are below 1MB and this only seems to be a problem with clients in
acrobat reader 7. Acrobat 5 clients it works fine. If we move the files to
another webserver however, the files are downloaded fine on those problem
machines. Which leads me to think its a client and server combination
problem.

Any ideas what? Webserver is IIS 6 - MIME settings all standard. Clients are
XP Pro and Home with full reader 7.07.


GreyWyvern

2006-04-25, 7:06 pm

And lo, didst speak in alt.www.webmaster:

> Some of the PDFs on our website only partially download (status bar
> progress shows several hundred KB loading) for some people.
>
> The files are below 1MB and this only seems to be a problem with clients
> in
> acrobat reader 7. Acrobat 5 clients it works fine. If we move the files
> to
> another webserver however, the files are downloaded fine on those problem
> machines. Which leads me to think its a client and server combination
> problem.


Use this tool http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html to compare the HTTP
headers served for PDFs by each server. That's the first thing I would do.

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/orca#search - Orca Search: Full-featured
spider and site-search engine
Charles Sweeney

2006-04-25, 7:06 pm

GreyWyvern wrote

> http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html


Neat!

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com
SpaceGirl

2006-04-25, 7:06 pm


GreyWyvern wrote:
> And lo, didst speak in alt.www.webmaster:
>
>
> Use this tool http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html to compare the HTTP
> headers served for PDFs by each server. That's the first thing I would do.
>
> Grey


If you are using FireFox, you could aways use the REALLY useful HTTP
plugin:

http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/

I use this one all the time when testing a site.

2006-04-26, 6:51 am

> Use this tool http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html to compare the HTTP
> headers served for PDFs by each server. That's the first thing I would
> do.
>
> Grey
>


Thanks for that - I checked the two servers and both seem to be identical
(although I must admit to not really knowing exactly what to look out for -
but I played spot the difference line-by-line and the results seem to be
identical).

I was also directed to the MS program Wfetch which does something similar,
but the output from that is very difficult to understand unless you know
what you are looking for.

So, all-in-all, I'm still stuck!

Any other suggestions?


Jerry Stuckle

2006-04-26, 7:10 pm

nospam@invalid.invalid wrote:
>
>
> Thanks for that - I checked the two servers and both seem to be identical
> (although I must admit to not really knowing exactly what to look out for -
> but I played spot the difference line-by-line and the results seem to be
> identical).
>
> I was also directed to the MS program Wfetch which does something similar,
> but the output from that is very difficult to understand unless you know
> what you are looking for.
>
> So, all-in-all, I'm still stuck!
>
> Any other suggestions?
>
>


Maybe you're getting dropped packets? This may be because your server is
overloaded, or possibly because one of the routers in the path is dropping packets.

If you're sure your server isn't overloaded, look at the paths from and to the
failing and working clients. Is there something in common with the failing ones
which isn't with the working ones?


--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

2006-04-27, 6:57 am

> Maybe you're getting dropped packets? This may be because your server is
> overloaded, or possibly because one of the routers in the path is dropping
> packets.
>
> If you're sure your server isn't overloaded, look at the paths from and to
> the failing and working clients. Is there something in common with the
> failing ones which isn't with the working ones?


Thanks for all the help on this - we found the reason in the end - basically
we had a logging system whereby a footer was appended to all documents to
fire off some code to log visitors in the database. In IIS 6 this is simply
a tick box that appends the footer onto "all" documents. I was aware of it,
yet noticing that it didn't append onto ASP pages I thought it probably
would only write the footer (.html) onto HTML pages. Hence it never really
occurred to me it might be appending to the target="new" window PDF.

Unticking the box to test proved it worked - so, solution found...so watch
out for that one all you webmasters out there. I think possibly Acrobat 5
ploughed on through regardless and displayed the file, but Reader 7 chokes
on it when rendering, hence the blank window.

Cheers.


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