WebDev - Detect Acrobat Reader DC

Hi All

I need to do two things in WebDev that may or may not be possible:

[1] Detect if Acrobat Reader DC is installed on the client device.

[2] Force the pdf file display to use the Acrobat Reader DC app on the device instead of the default one.

Any ideas?

Cheers
André

Considering that a browser is supposed to be completely isolating a website code from the client machine, what you are trying to do is probably not possible.

Any direct interaction with a client pc is generally done only via an activeX (in the old time with IE) or a java applet (now forbidden in most browsers by default)...

So I don't see how that could be possible, short of installing a windev program on the machine to configure all that

Hi Argus

It turns out it is possible to detect if Acrobat Reader DC is installed on the client machine - using Javascript. What you can then do is decide to proceed or not. In this case we are serving up pdf form fillers rich with various entry controls. Most PDF engines fall short of the JS inside the PDF - Acrobat Reader DC sets the standard and gets it right. What we intend doing is detect if Acrobat Reader DC and is the default and then proceed, else popup with a message and link to download and set as the default. This will cut down on support and quite considerably so.

Going to test later today. Holding thumbs.

Cheers
Andre