Blank Screen

When calling my SkemaPDF.aspx page, the page is blank in IE (it works perfect in firefox), if i click refresh, my pdf forms is displayed??

SkemaPDF.aspx contains
<%@ Page Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="SkemaPDF.aspx.vb" Inherits="SkemaPDF" Culture="da-DK" UICulture="da"%>

and the codebehind
Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load

        Dim MyPDF As ceTe.DynamicPDF.Document = New ceTe.DynamicPDF.Document()
        MyPDF.Creator = "SkemaPDF.aspx"
        MyPDF.Author = "Torben Hansen"
        MyPDF.Title = "Skema"
        MyPDF.CompressionLevel = 2
        Document.DefaultPdfFormat = ceTe.DynamicPDF.PdfFormat.SinglePass
        MyPDF.Producer = "Erhvervsskolen Hamlet"
        MyPDF.InitialPageMode = PageMode.Auto
        MyPDF.InitialPageZoom = PageZoom.FitWidth

        Dim x As Integer

        For x = 0 To CInt(Request.Params("Uger")) - 1
            MyPDF.Pages.Add(Create_Skema(x))
        Next

        MyPDF.DrawToWeb()

        Response.End()

    End Sub

Hello,

Can you please tell us what version of Adobe Acrobat and .NET Framework are you using? This will help us identify the exact cause of the behavior.

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team

ASP.NET v2.0.50727
Acrobat Reader 7.0.7

Hello,

Are you able to run the examples on our web site or you experience the same behavior?

The Generator for .NET examples page can be found here.

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team

The ex. on your site, works perfect..
My site, did work, but suddently it does'nt, maybe som hotfix or ????

When my page opens as blank, the IE dropdown menu system is changed, as expected, like on your site..

And i can't right click on the page, after refresh i got your pdf menu when i right click

Hello,

It is possible that the Acrobat 7.0 itself or the Acrobat 7.0 browser plug-in could have some how gotten corrupt. Can you try reinstalling Acrobat and see if it works.

Also can you try running your application from some another machine and verify if you experience the same behavior. 

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team

I did test it on severel machines, with same result.
so i dont think the problem i my local pc..
 

Hello,

Since our web examples work from your machine it sounds like this could be an issue with the HTTP headers.  Use a trace tool like ieHTTPHeaders to view the headers when the PDF is being created.  Send these headers over to support.  We can take a look at them to see if we can find any problem.

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team

My machine dont work, with ieHTTPHeaders active, i will try from another machine

I have a similar problem. Only on my machine, even your online examples don't work in IE, except the two Form Filler examples. I'm running Acrobat Pro 6.0.5.

Hello,

Can you please verify what version of .NET framework you have installed on your machine and what version are you using?

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team

On my desktop machine:
Internet Explorer  6.0.2900.2180   WinXP sp2
Visual Studio 2005
Net Framework 2.0
dynamicPDF 4.0

On my laptop:
Same IE version
Visual Studio 2003
Net Framework 1.1
dynamicPDF 3.03


Neither one can run your examples on www.dynamicpdf.com in IE - I get a blank screen. Firefox works fine.

Found out how to get build numbers:

On laptop
Visual Studio 2003 ver 7.1.3088
.Net Framework 1.1.4322 SP1

On desktop
Visual Studio 2005  8.0.50727.42
.Net Framework ver 2.0.50727

Hello,

Can you please verify that you laptop does not have .NET Framework 2.0 installed. Also what version of Acrobat reader do you have installed on both machines?

If you are using Acrobat v6.0, we did discover a bug that was in Visual Studio 2005.  This bug was related to streaming any PDFs to the browser.  You can take a look at the bug report here: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=93482. And notice that this has been fixed in Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005. But a new bug was reintroduced when they fixed this one which is unresolved by Microsoft in Visual Studio 2005 and Acrobat 6.0.x in combination. Works fine when using Acrobat 7.0. Following is the link to the bug report that was submitted to Microsoft: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=93483.

Remember that even if you are running VS2005, that this bug will only affect PDFs draw to the browser (this will not affect PDFs saved to disk) and this will only affect machines that actually have VS2005 installed on them (likely development machines) and not any end users.

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team

Hello, I am having the same issue. I received blank screens when viewing the examples on my own system (localhost) and also on your website. I do not have any issues viewing pdf files inline on other sites. I upgraded to Acrobat 7 and now the pdfs come up OK. I have always had both .net 1.1 and 2.0 installed.

Question: How can I assure that my users who are using Acrobat 6 can view the PDFs OK?

Thank you,
Abe

Well, upgrading to Adobe Acrobat 7 seemed to fix the problem. That is a workable solution is my case.

Hello Abe,

As long as the end users with Acrobat Reader 6.0 do not have Visual Studio 2005 installed, they will be able to view the PDF document in the browser without any problem. This issue will only affect machines that actually have VS2005 installed on them.

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team

I have discovered that this problem happens on machines that do not have Visual Studio installed (but Adobe 6.0).

If you must ensure that your end user can view your PDF. this is my work around.

Instead of doing a MyPDF.DrawToWeb() do the following:

MyPDF.Draw("C:\Website\root\directory\HelloWorld.pdf");
Response.Redirect("HelloWorld.pdf");

Regards

Mikael

Hello Mikael,

The end users having Acrobat 6.0 can view the PDF without any problem if they do not have Visual Studio 2005 installed.

Please try adding the below line of code right after the DrawToWeb method of the document object and it may solve your problem.

        Visible = false;

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team.

Hi, we have the same issue:

We are running .NET 2.0 and we have VS 2005 installed.

 * We can run the examples on the ceTe site fine

 * when the same examples run from our local network the page initially does not load in IE.  But if we click "GO" in the browser, it refreshes with the PDF.

 * The redirect option described above works, however it is undesirable for us to store the PDF on the server.  The idea is to have them generated and returned to the request dynamically, no need to store a copy.

 * The Visibility=false; suggestion does not work for us.

Can you please provide a solution that does not involve storing a copy of the PDF?

Thanks!

 - Daniel

Hello Daniel,

We will need to take a look at the headers from the page calling the pdf. I would recommend using ieHTTPHearders tool which allows you to capture all IE headers. Run your example once again and send over the headers it returns to our Support Team and they will look at it.

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team.

I too was experiencing issues with blank screens and errors downloading the pdf from our secured website. 

Found the following contents from a blog...

---Start of blog
I found this article and it started me down the right path, but was not the definitive answer, so I wanted to share my finding in hopes of helping others. After the fact I was able to recongnize that some of the above posters came to the same conclusions as me, but no one explicitly stated them.

My environment is SSL, PDF or RTF download, IE6+, my users where getting the “file could not be written to the cache” error.

This MS KB entry gives the details (and suggests horrible registry hacks)

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=323308 [^]

I choose a simpler route, I made sure my web application did not send any of the following:

Cache-control:no-store
Cache-control:no-cache
Pragma: no-cache

and then make my users have unchecked the “Do not save encrypted pages to disk” in “Internet Options / Advanced” (unchecked _is_ the default setting, but some users have changed it)

-- End of blog

I found that adding the registry hack worked for me.  Even a workmate that that was getting a blank screen started working.

I've tested with both IE6 and IE7 with the same results.  I would suspect the DrawToWeb method is sending the above cache controls to IE browsers.

Both my workmate and I have both .Net 1.1 and 2.0 installed.  We are using generator 3.x.

Hello,

The DrawToWeb method checks for the connection type, whether it is a Secure or non Secure connection and depending on the connection type it sets the headers. If it detects a secure connection (SSL) then it will not add the unnecessary headers like cache-control:no-cache etc.

For a secure connection, the following headers are not added when using the DrawToWeb() method:

 Cache-control:no-cache
 Pragma: no-cache

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team.

I have the same problem.  It works for the first launch but I get a blank screen if I click on the pdf link a second time.

Brian

Have you added a 'Visible = False' line after your call to the 'DrawToWeb()' method?  And does that affect your results?

Do you get the same behavior when you access the examples on our website?

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team

Didn't help.  I get the heading only.  The same document will work 3 times and fail.  If I select a different document it will fail on the first try after viewing a previous document.

Brian

Hello Brian,

What heading message are you seeing in the page? Can you please try running examples  from our web site and see if you are getting the white screen. Also Please send over the headers returned by the page calling the PDF to our Support Team, I would recommend using ieHTTPHearders tool which allows you to capture all IE headers. Run your example once again and send over the headers it returns.

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team.

I only get the page header I created for the document.  .Net must be caching the page even though I close it and open a new page.  I will run some tests.
Brian

My problem was a coding error.  MyDocument.Pages.Add(MyPage) was in a sub that didn't execute every time.
Sorry, Brian

We applied a certificate to our load balancer and that did not help our cause to download pdfs with IE.  The load balancer takes care of the SSL and passed clear to the web servers.  I would suspect your code is detecting that the connection is not secure, resulting in the inability to download the pdfs.

Loren

Hello Loren,

Our product detects whether the connection is SSL or non SSL and then adds the necessary headers.

Can you please send over the headers from the page calling the pdf to our Support Team. I would recommend using  ieHTTPHearders tool which allows you to capture all IE headers.

You can also set the required headers instead of using the DrawToWeb method as a work around for this and it will solve your problem. Following is the sample code.

       Response.ContentType = "application/pdf"
       Response.ExpiresAbsolute = DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(10)
       Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline; inline; filename=FormFill2.pdf")
       MyDocument.Draw(Response.OutputStream)

Thanks,
ceTe Software Support Team.