About Justin VanAlstyne Expertise I have a full working knowledge of Adobe Acrobat 5.0 - 7.01. I have experience in creating interactive PDFs, embedding multimedia, web-based forms, creating presentations using PDF, advanced prepress preparation, PDF web optimization, color management, and using PDF as a soft-proofing tool. I do not have a lot of experience using Acrobat`s advanced Javascripting features, though a lot of custom functionality can be built into a PDF this way.
Experience
Past/Present clients Marsh, Inc. (http://www.marsh.com), Impel Corp (http://www.impelcorp.com), Home Properties (http://www.homeproperties.com)
Expert: Justin VanAlstyne Date: 9/3/2004 Subject: PDF and the Web
Question Hi Justin,
I'm having trouble with PDFs not showing up on my Website. I have a Website (blscareerservices.com) and have links to resume samples that I created in PDF form. The pdfs are fine on my computer, but when I access them from the Website, all that shows up is Acrobat with a blank screen. I contacted the ISP who said the PDFs were faulty. I just created a new PDF(see the child care sample at http://www.blscareerservices.com/Resumes.htm) with the same result, so I doubt that's the problem. Is there a setting I need to change when making the PDF? Have you seen a problem like this before? I created the Website in Dreamweaver, but since the link works, I can't see how that would matter. Thanks so much for your help!
Barb
Answer Barb,
First off, sorry for the long response time. I was away for the weekend.
I too get blank pages when downloading a PDF from the link you gave me. I tried a bunch of things to try and get anything to show in Acrobat, including removing the embedded Garamond fonts (which takes up 80% of the 150kb file that I downloaded, by the way), selecting all text (to try and see if anything was hidden), and turning on "use local fonts" in case you had missed embedding a crucial font. I couldn't come up with anything.
How are you creating the PDFs? What are they supposed to look like, text only? If text only, try not embedding the fonts and see if it displays. I have a suspscion that it is something related to your fonts. When trying view the file space usage or font usage, Acrobat gives me an error about not being able to extract the embedded font "ACDOJJ+Garamond-Bold". That's an odd name for a common font. Try switching to just plain Arial (and embed it) and see if it displays.
But what this has to do with it being fine before the website download doesn't necessarily apply. Check to make sure that you are uploading the files correctly (sometimes the binary vs. ASCII settings in FTP programs can cause problems). Try uploading a PDF using your web servers online control panel, if applicable, instead of FTP. Try a different FTP program. I can't think of any on the server itself that would affect the integrity of a file. Sometimes settings between Acrobat and your broswer get messed up, and it won't open properly in the browser or something. But just straight downloading the file and opening it seperately in Acrobat produces the same problem.
Other than that, try trashing your custom saved PDF configuration. Start fresh with a new one, and go through each setting. Make sure you aren't using any OPI settings (used in the prepress industry for placement of comping images).
Let me know if any of my comments and questions turned up anything, or you can think of anything you left out.
