[thelist] RE: Acrobat detection

John Dowdell jdowdell at macromedia.com
Tue Dec 18 16:49:40 CST 2001


Try checking for tights. Sometimes sequins and rhinestones are a giveaway,
but they *always* wear tights....

... oh, you meant *Adobe* Acrobat, sorry.... ;-)

That routine you provided looks like it will work for many situations.
IE/Mac can be a little funny there, though, because some versions balk when
they see VBScript, and earlier versions don't offer a navigator.plugins
array. (I'm not sure why that compound boolean test in the VBScript block
is needed, because most browsers just ignore scripting languages they don't
understand.) Then there's Opera, Mozilla, and other environments.

Even if this works in a particular browser, however, it doesn't help with
version-detection... according to Media Metrix, 71% of consumers tested
earlier this month could see *some* Acrobat content without installing
anything new, but on these larger plugins people tend not to upgrade as
often as on the smaller plugins... look particularly at the version
differences between Flash and Shockwave for a parallel:

<http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/tech_breakdown
.html>
<http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetr
ation.html>
<http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/shockwaveplayer/version_pe
netration.html>

Perhaps use that script you have, to help at least some folks, but realize
it won't help all of them, and provide a link for "If you can't see this,
get Acrobat here?" That may be a way to beat the browser differences and
version-detection issues....?

jd





John Dowdell, Macromedia Tech Support, San Francisco CA US
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