UPDATED: eClass Moodle Problems for PDFs with Adobe Reader Update for Mac/Firefox

The latest release of the Adobe PDF Reader (version 10.1.3) causes problems for some eClass Moodle users when viewing PDFs within courses. This issue only affects users on Mac computers who are using the latest version of Firefox (11).

When version 10.1.3 of Adobe Reader gets installed, users can no longer view eClass PDF files using Firefox. When opened, the PDF content will not render directly in the browser, nor will any link be provided with the option to download the file.

UPDATE: The most recent version of Firefox, 13.x,  will now show a link to download the PDF content (but still will not show the content in-browser). We have been tracking this issue and it is not limited to eClass Moodle PDFs. Mozilla support has released 2 support posts that describe a couple of different workarounds.

The first involves switching Firefox into 32-bit mode and will allow users to view PDFs directly within their browser: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/925330.

The second is a Firefox setting that will allow users to force downloads of PDFs to save them, print them, or view them offline: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/925055

At this time, we still recommend that users do not update to this latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. If users have already performed the update, they will need to remove Adobe Reader version 10.1.3 to restore PDF function within eClass on Firefox. The previous safe release, version 9.4, is available at http://get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions/.

If you have any questions about this, please email ctl@ualberta.ca.

Regards,
CTL Technology Services