Joomla! Forum - community, help and support

Hello,
Edocs 1.1 was working fine on Joomla 1.5.23 server ... suddenly no PDF display of any of the various pages I display on the site. Been working fine for months.

The "link" feature still provides a successful download of the PDF. Hmm.

Tried reinstalling the plugin, but same non-display.

I'm inclined to think something changed at Google end.

Any ideas what to do?

Thanks, Alan

.
Please post a link to the page, so we can examine what is happening.



.

See their OWN demo page at http://www.mediaeventi.it/en/projects/joomla/edocs#demo
Doesn't work on IE9, Safari 5.1, nor FF6.

I would assume that something serious got whacked.

.
Something does seem to have been changed at Google Docs.
I did discover a few things.

Google docs viewer iframes that I have embedded manually are now also not working.
I do not remember testing these with IE9 before so I do not know if they worked before.

It does work in IE9 now if I add http://docs.google.com to the trusted sites.
Obviously that is not a good solution.

Note that even the Google Docs Viewer page demo does not work.
Go here: http://docs.google.com/viewer
Enter a document link, and click Generate link, and then "To view now, click here."
Same problem.

A Drupal plug-in has the same issue:
http://testbed7.m-so.com/content/simple ... -formatter

It appears to only affect the iframe embeds.
If you do directly to the embed link that works. For example:
http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http:/ ... edded=true

Opera 11.5 shows an error message when viewing the plug-in demo page:
"The website does not permit its content to be displayed in a frame. It must be displayed in a separate window. "
And gives a link with this text: Load document in a new window

Unfortunately the only potential solution I can think of right now is to display Google docs in a pop-up window (not an iframe).
Have to test the various browsers.


Hmmmm . . . just tested IE9/Opera 11.5/Safari 5.0.3 and the Zoho Viewer with remote PDF, ODT, and XLSX files.
All are still working fine in the various browsers.
The Zoho Viewer uses a similar iframe and link.

So the issue seems to be with Google Docs.
.

Thanks, Ken!

My level of expertise with Edocs is getting the "{edocs}my_documents/pdf/catalogue.pdf,600,300{/edocs}" lines correct. When they were all working, I moved on.

If something changed at Google Docs, I hope the Edocs author will issue an update. Until then, my (production) site is somewhat crippled unless I do a redesign without Edocs.

Update on this problem ... still no solution.

1. Different computer (MBPro running Safari 5.1) viewed my Edocs page OKAY. When page displays, a download-progress bar appears, which is then replaced by the document view when download finishes.

2. The SAME MBPro running FireFox 4.0 fails; updated to 6.01, and that fails too.

3. When Edocs fails, it doesn't show progress bar.

4. My main Mac Pro running Safari 5.1 does NOT work. (Both MBP and Pro are running latest Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and should be identical. Both Safari's have same prefs settings.)

Could this be related to a script that should be enabled in the browser? JavaScript is on.
It would seem that Edocs isn't reaching out to Google for some reason.

I'm still baffled!

.
The issue appears to be with Google Docs, not the Edocs plug-in.
As I mentioned above, the Google Docs Viewer demo on their own website does not work.

I also tested my own extension which embeds Google Docs Viewer with PDF, PPS, and PPT files.
All fail the same way.

The issue appears to be with Google Docs Viewer and newer browsers.
Perhaps some new security feature is part of the problem.
As I said above, IE9 works when I add the Google Docs Viewer URL to the trusted sites.

Zoho Viewer which also uses a similar iframe still works fine with tests of ODT, PDF, SXC, XLS, and XLSX files.

The issue appears to be with Google Docs.
.

I just tried IE9 ... it got as far as the banner at the top of the doc-controls at the top of <blank> display. Clicking the far-right icon to open the doc in a new window was successful. A reload of the previous failed display is successful.

Close IE9, restart, is successful directly without doing all the above ... for that single doc.

Cannot add http://docs.google.com to the "trusted sites" list without https. However, once having visited my Edocs page, IE9 seems to have remembered that the page was okay to display. BUT ONLY that page: still need to jump through the above hoops to display other pages on the same site.

Perhaps it is some security issue. Still no real solution at this point other than a redesign of my site's doc presentations.

Thanks anyhow.
Alan

.
There is a switch which allows http:// in the Trusted Sites.

I also found that once you visit the document URL directly it works.
This is because the pages are then in the browser cache.

The Zoho Viewer works, but it is not as attractive.

Another option is the FlexPaper Viewer.
You convert the PDF to a SWF and then display it with the viewer.
Works very well; looks very good.

FlexPaper example:



.

.

This same thing is happening to us and we use edocs quite extensively. I couldn't even figure out from the edocs site how to request support. Is there some way to get info from Google? This is not good!

.
I have found some additional discussion about this.
Google is apparently not talking about this as I have found nothing from them.

It appears that Google requires that you allow them to track you in order to show the PDFs.
Newer browsers such as IE9, Firefox 6, and Safari 5 block 3rd-party cookies by default.
Combine that with no P3P policy coming from Google docs - IE 9 blocks the site.
Same thing with Firefox 6 and Safari 5.
I have 3rd-party cookies blocked and Google Docs Viewer does not work.
Note that they have changed the way their demo link works on the Google Docs Viewer page so it now works again,
but that is not how an embed on your own website actually works.

I do not use the Chrome browser as I really do not like Google tracking everything I do.
And I assume 3rd-party cookies are not disabled by default in Chrome.
Google says, "Everyone use Chrome so we can gather data about everything you do online."

So it appears for Google Docs Viewer embeds to work:
- Google wants you to enable 3rd-party cookies so they can track you
- Google will not provide a P3P policy which discloses what they want to do to you

It looks like it is time to dump Google Docs Viewer.

The Zoho Viewer still works with PDFs because they provide a P3P policy,
and Zoho Viewer does not require a 3rd-party cookie.


You can embed PDFs directly without using Google Docs Viewer.
Looks like that is the way to go now.
Provide a link to a PDF and I can show you the embed code for testing.
.

So edocs won't work anymore, is that the gist?

I should switch to Zoho Viewer? Is it easy for my users to embed pdf files?

For example: http://www.sdst.org/documents/stms_stud ... 1_2012.pdf

.
Here is an example of how to embed directly for Adobe Viewer (or other PDF viewer):
But this is not "easy for (your) users" to do this.

The Edocs plug-in only supports using Google Docs Viewer to embed PDFs.
So that plug-in is not going to be able to solve this issue.

The Enbed PDF plug-in also supports Zoho Viewer and the direct embed like the code I posted above.
It has been awhile since I played with that plug-in, but give it a try, it may do what you need.

Enbed PDF (P)(L)
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... -pdf/14117

.

Thank you. If the other issue is not fixable, we'll have to give Enbed a try. You're right, my users will never do the code to embed directly for Adobe.

Just tried the code above on my Joomla site, but it didn't play out real well:
Safari wanted the Adobe Reader, but after installed, the page still wouldn't display.
FF wanted a "plug-in" but couldn't figure out what it was missing to install it.
So, even if we did the coding, the users would be perplexed.

The link above for Enbed PDF looks promising; I'll try that next.

Many thanks Ken!

awilcox wrote:Just tried the code above on my Joomla site, but it didn't play out real well:
Safari wanted the Adobe Reader, but after installed, the page still wouldn't display.
FF wanted a "plug-in" but couldn't figure out what it was missing to install it.
So, even if we did the coding, the users would be perplexed.

The link above for Enbed PDF looks promising; I'll try that next.

Many thanks Ken!

Yes, those are some of the too-common problems with direct embed of PDFs.
You are dependent on the user's settings in both the viewer application and the browser.
So direct embed is really only practical where you have some standards such as within a corporate site.

I did some testing with the Enbed PDF plug-in and it does not work with Google Docs Viewer either.
Even the proxy workaround setting did not work with Google Docs Viewer.

There are a number of other people who have posted this issue around the web.
And there are multiple posts in the Google Docs forum which go back months.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/G ... d291&hl=en
The only response so far is to 'use Chrome."
Yeah, use Chrome so Google can track everything you do online.
Scumbags.
If Google would drop the required tracking and support users' privacy this issue would go away.
I do not expect other browsers and masses of users are going to disable privacy settings.
The trend is to more privacy features in all browsers (except apparently Chrome).
So basically it is time to dump the Google Docs Viewer and find a better solution.


The only reliable way to display a PDF online is to convert it to a SWF and display it with a viewer such as the example in the screenshot I posted above.
Then the 99% of people who have Flash can view the PDF without any problems.
.

Has there been any solution from the edocs people? I will need to make a change if one isn't forthcoming. Do you suggest Enbed instead?

.
The problem is not the Edocs extension, so it cannot be fixed by the developer.

Users of the Enbed extension have the same problem.
The problem is not the Enbed extension, so it cannot be fixed by the developer.

Users of the ARI Docs Viewer extension have the same problem.
The problem is not the ARI Docs Viewer extension, so it cannot be fixed by the developer.

The problem is Google Docs Viewer's lack of support for the privacy controls in newer browsers.

The Zoho Viewer does not have this problem.
Look at the server response; it provides a privacy policy, so it works.
Unfortunately the Zoho Viewer does not have the ability to resize which severely limits its usefulness.
If it did, it would be an easy way to replace the Google Docs Viewer.
.

Then how does one protest to Google? Are they aware of the issue? Is there NO way to easily embed pdf files or other documents on a web page?

Is there a way to somehow convert a pdf document to an iframe and embed it that way? I may be talking nonsense, but I just wondered? This problem is huge for us. We want to embed all the time.

.
The current method is embedding an IFrame.


.

Well I am able to embed movies as iframes. Isn't there some way to use embed codes to embed a pdf just as I would a movie.