Safari not displaying some PDF Files.

I am trying to go to the FEC website to look at some donation forms as part of my job. For some of the pages, it's blank -- what I mean is, the page will open, but the actual form won't -- there is message link that says 'missing plug-in.' When I click on it a litte window appears that says

'To view this content, you need Adobe Reder. Click '' More Info '' to visit the company's webstie.'

I've done that, and downloaded the latest version, but I get the same result.

Doesn't make a difference if it's opening in Adobe Reader or Preview (which is the current default.)

Can anyone tell me what's going on? I don't know if it has to do with the time of the donation, although some of pages to come up -- I think they're older forms.

A follow up to this, folks -- the pages open up on my PC in IE and Firefox, but they won't open up in Firefox either on the MAC. It's really strange -- I used to be able to open up the forms. Could it be that the latest update to Snow Leopard could have caused something to happen?

Can you provide the exact Link which has the forms? I'll take a look and see if I can open them. I went to the FEC main site but could not find a link to the forms. Could be that I didn't look hard enough.

chscag --

I want to give you a link for one of the people I'm researching (I'm on a website that requires a membership and I'm not sure that I ought to do so, just for privacy/legal reasons.)

If you go to the advanced search page on the FEC website -- here is the link:

Advanced Individual Search

Enter a name and give a range of years -- use a generic name, like Bob Smith. The ones I've been having trouble with seem to be 2008-2011. Click on some of the links for the reports and see if you don't get the same result. I can get the forms to display on my PC, as I said, but on my Mac, I get nothing. The older forms show up without any problem. Not sure what's going on.

I just went to the website and entered the generic name you suggested and used some arbitrary donation amounts. I was able to view the forms from the links that were provided without receiving any blank pages.

Some of the advanced information, however, would not display. That is when I tried to link further down. It would give me the page number such as:

Page 104 of 231 but no information was provided.

But, I never once received an error regarding a missing plug in or had difficulty viewing what it allowed me to see.

I hope this helps you to resolve whatever might be wrong. By the way, I'm using Safari 5.1 running in Lion.

chsag --

Here's what I did -- I entered Smith, Bob in the last name/first name boxes, then for the dates I entered 1/1/2008 to 1/1/2011. No donation amounts

I got some forms. Click on the link for form 10020 333662. Here it is: PAGE BY PAGE REPORT DISPLAY FOR 10020330001 (Page 3662 of 4562)

see what you get. I'm getting the page, but no form, with the message 'missing plug in' in small grey letters. If you get that, click on it and tell me what happens.

If you are getting the form, any idea what might be happening with me? Perhaps some setting that needs to be changed?

OK. We're talking about the same thing. I'm getting exactly what you're seeing - "missing plug in" in small letters at the bottom of the page. I didn't see that before when I said the info was missing on the page. In other words the form displayed but the information was missing.

Clicking on the "missing plug in" sends me to the Adobe site and gives me an opportunity to download the Adobe reader version 10.1. (I didn't download it.)

How do we resolve that? Good question. I wish I knew why that particular plug in is required? Safari has no difficulty in displaying PDF information from most sites using the built in Preview. I do all my on line banking on PDF pages which are provided by my bank. No problem.

And from what you stated previously, it doesn't display correctly even when viewing in Adobe Reader. My next question for you..... Can you try it using a Windows machine? I suspect viewing the forms from a Mac is not compatible. It sounds like one of those times when only Windows Internet Explorer will work.

Yep, I can view them on a windows machine. But I used to -- just last week if not sooner -- be able to view them on my mac. The older forms -- from about 2005 or so back -- display, just not the more recent ones. I hadn't touched the mac's preferences, and I had Preview as the default PDF viewer.

Straitsfan said:

Yep, I can view them on a windows machine. But I used to -- just last week if not sooner -- be able to view them on my mac. The older forms -- from about 2005 or so back -- display, just not the more recent ones. I hadn't touched the mac's preferences, and I had Preview as the default PDF viewer.

Click to expand...

Try to get in touch with the web master of the site and find out if they changed anything with the newer forms. I suspect that's exactly what they did. Not much you can do until they make the new forms compatible once more.

I'm a bit tired of some web sites and web masters treating Mac users as "step children". With Macs growing in world wide popularity and usage every day, you would think they would be aware that Windows machines and Internet Explorer is not the only game in town.

I have recently developed exactly the same problem. I'm not able to view pdfs from any website. This started as just a problem on Safari, but then Firefox developed in the same way. This is also regardless of whether I'm using Preview or Adobe Reader as the preferred viewer.

Always the same thing, the screen is completely black (or white in the case of Firefox). Did you manage to resolve this issue?

I'm running OS 10.6.8 and Safari 5.1 if this makes any difference.

No, the problem persists. It's only on my mac, though -- the same pages will display fine in Windows. I have the same OS and Safari version as you. It happened all of a sudden. One day I could view them, and the next day, nada. Strange.

I have noticed, though, that it's only the newer pages (from say 2006 or so to the present) that won't display. The older pages are fine as well.