Digital Workshop

Hi,
I have produced a presentation that contains "docviews" that show a pdf file. I have tested it on Windows XP and 98, with Adobe reader 6,7 and 8 - it has worked perfectly - a credit to Opus.
BUT I am trying it out on a Vista machine (home premium) with Adobe reader 8 and the "docviews" do not display anything. The Adobe is set to "display PDF's in browser" as in the other versions I have used.
When opening Adobe reader on it's own, I can open the pdf files.

EDIT - "I have tried a simple presentation using a word document and then does not show the docview when the presentation runs."

I would be grateful if someone could suggest why this is happening.

Michael

Hi Michael,
I just set up a pub using the method you described to load a pdf file into
docview and it does appear to work on my Vista notebook after publishing and and installing it.
Notebook is an HP Pavilion dv6000 -- Centrino Duo / NVidia GeForce 7400/ Vista Home Premium.
The pdf reader was set to a default install; and Vista Aero was turned on.
Is your Vista PC "designed for Vista" or was it upgraded from XP?
Can you post a small example that doesn't work on your computer so others with Vista can try it?

cheers
Paul

Hi Paul,
Thanks for the offer, the example I've got at the moment is with a word doc as the docview - and as we're not allowed to post a word doc, I'll have to go back and create a new file, with a pdf as the docview.
The two vista machines that I tried the publication out on were both vista native machines - one running vista home premium - the other vista ultimate - unfortunately neither of the machines are readily availiable to repeat the testing.

I'll hopefully post the new file before the sun rises over North Island!

Thanks again.
Michael.

Hi Paul,
I have attached the imp and pdf files, look forward to hearing your results.
If this works on your machine, perhaps I could send you direct the exe file and word doc that I know didn't work on the vista machines that I tried out the program on. The total size would be about 2mb.

all the best
Michael.

Hi Michael,
Still works for me on Vista.
If you wish, you can send the exe file and word doc to the email address in my profile and I'll see if it works over here.

Paul

Michael --

Do you really need a Doc Browser to look at a PDF file which only has one picture? Why not just use an Image Object? OK, if you've got several photos, use a Slideshow Object.

If you've got text in a Word Doc file, just copy & paste it into a Text Object in OPUS.


I'm suggesting you simplfy your life/problem by using the OPUS features which work across all the Windows operating systems. Your alternative is probably going to be -- wait a long time for either a Microsoft/VISTA or OPUS fix... Just trying to solve your problem.

Hi folks,
Paul - your email doesn't seem to like .exe files as attachments - I'll send the .ilm file and associated doc - perhaps if that works, you could advise what publication settings you used - could I perhaps be making a basic set up error? (although it does work on xp).

Fred - many thanks for your thoughts - the file I posted was just a simple example with doc view - the original publication that is causing problems is a teaching assesment document that consists of 63 pages (documents)each consisting of 3 pages. The teacher can look through the pdf docviews - when they need to fill in a particular document, they click on a link to open the pages up in word doc format.
Originally the document was just that - a paper copy of approx 200 pages - in an effort to be more green I've tried producing an opus publication that could be used from each teacher's computer - everything seemed to be OK until the dreaded vista came into the equation.
Thinking of your suggestion of a text object - will this work if the text is in a table?

all the best
Michael

Hi Michael,
I published your example on XP, transferred exe and it's associated files to a Vista notebook and it works ok.
I've sent you a published zipped example that works for me.
Most email servers will reject certain kinds of files for security reasons; exe's are normally rejected unless they are zipped first.
If the file I sent you doesn't work I will assume that you have a driver problem, or some other issue preventing display.
Make sure that you keep the 00000000.doc and ILMOle.dll files in the same folder with test.exe. I'm assuming that Office is installed on the Vista computer.

Paul

If you continue to have problems displaying pdf and doc files, perhaps a different approach might help you.

Let me say at the outset that I have no experience with Vista, and I hope to keep it that way for a long time.

A brief background to explain why.
PDF has become an almost universal format for document exchange, but unfortunately, a few years back Adobe started fine-tuning Reader. This caused some compatibility issues with different versions of PDF files and the versions of Reader used by clients from all over. I decided to try for something different.

PDF Files
I found a great utility called PDF2EXE: http://www.pdf2exe.com/pdf2exe.html. There is a freeware version. This takes all the PDF formats I've tried (not any versions post-early-2007) and they have worked perfectly. You can then use this with the standard Launch Application.

DOC Files
It suites my purposes to save all these DOC files as RTF and import them into an Opus chapter that I've sized to allow the RTF files to display on top of the page from which it is called.

Perhaps these ideas might help you find a way around your current challenges?

Sometimes, when all else fails, we need to look outside the square.

Hi Folks,
Paul - many thanks for zip file - will try it out on Tuesday when I'll be near a vista machine.

Ray - many thanks for your thoughts - I agree about Adobe, they can be a pain in the rear - I had tried changing the word documents into image files, but the quality wasn't good enough - I had assumed that rtf files would loose the table formatting - will give that a try.

all the best to all you experts.
Michael.

Hi Everyone,
Thanks to Paul we had a short version of my project that worked on his vista machine. Trying it out on a UK vista machine - initially it still didn't display the docview (on this occasion the docview is a word doc). Remembering the compatibility mode, we tried xp - this stirred word into action (we had overlooked that it was 2007 on the machine, and our doc had been created in 2000!) and it loaded up it's own compatible module - our project then displayed correctly.

Even going back to vista mode, the project worked?

We then tried our original project (with pdf docviews) - it works in compatible mode but not in vista mode.

Hope everyone is not as confused as I - but am grateful, that all I've got to do initially is talk someone through switching on the compatible mode.

Once again many thanks for all your thoughts.
Michael.
Who really will go on holiday now

Howdy, my latest pub was tested on XP and it all works fine. However, when tested on a Vista machine, it shows a white background where the docview is, but not the html page itself. The XP compatibility mode trick didn't fix the issue. However, I'm using 5.5, not 6, and I am aware that Vista is not supported for 5.5. At this point, it's not a huge deal for me since my client (a software company) has told its clients that it will not support Vista.

Hi everyone,
nice to be back after nearly 3 weeks in China . I have discovered another setting that can prevent the docviews working - in Internet Explorer under Internet Options and then Advanced and security there is an option of "allow active content from CDs to run on my computer" and "allow active content to run in files on my computer" - this was on a XP Pro machine but may be helpful.

all the best
Michael

Hello,
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I had tried that, but with no luck.
Thanks again,
Mike