How to disable native pdf viewer in Firefox 19?

I have Adobe Acrobat installed so I want to disable the new native pdf viewer that is built in to Firefox 19. How do I do it?

I tried changing this from Option>Applications to force pdfs to open through Adobe Acrobat, but it did not help, they still open with the native pdf viewer.

I then changed the "pdfjs.disabled" to true, inside about:config, but that disabled pdfs from opening inside Firefox all together.

Any suggestions?

 

couldnt you just go to plugins and hit the disable button??

 

The native pdf does not show up in the add-ons. There I have the adobe add-on installed and it is enabled, but the pdfs inside Firefox still opens through the new native pdf viewer. I want them to open with adobe acrobat instead.

I am searching the web, but the directions found there just disable the opening of pdfs inside Firefox all together. I want to pdfs to open inside firefox but through adobe acrobat, not the native viewer

 

The native PDF reader is a Foxit plugin. It does show up as in my screen shot. getting adobe to open through Firefox. cant help you there.

 

No. Foxit is a different company, that makes pdf readers. You probably have that installed on your system.

See here.

 

the foxit came with the installation of FF. never had it installed.

 

I do not have it on my system. I do have a plugin from adobe installed, but I have had that before upgrading to v19.

Go to the plugin page and click "more" after the plugin. It will tell you the date it was installed the date it was last updated on your system.

 

There is a drop down menu in Tools>Options>Applications>pdf>choose what you want to use!

 

It was never on my system. Had to replace the HDD two weeks ago and it was never installed. Had to start over nothing was transferred from the old HDD it was DOA.

 

I did. It is set to "Use Adobe Acrobat (in Firefox)" but the pdfs still open through the new native pdf viewer.

 

How did you use to view pdfs in Firefox before upgrading to v19? Because before today, Firefox did not have a native pdf viewer, so if you could view pdfs inside Firefox, then you or somebody else must have installed the Foxit addon for Firefox, as it does not come natively with Firefox.

 

I didnt I have adobe and I didnt use FF before Ver. 19

 

Well then I can assure you that Foxit plugin does not come natively with Firefox. It is a third party plugin that a user can install if they want to view pdf documents inside Firefox without downloading them to the computer first.

 

type "about:config" in your URL bar and hit the ENTER key on your keyboard

Click the "I'll be careful, I promise" button

On the search bar on the about:config page, type or copy the following "pdfjs.disabled". The default value is set to false, double click on it to set it to true.

Restart Firefox

the PDF Viewer should no longer be set to it's default values

 

So you didn't download it from official site? And you have old flash, just saying.

 

I did that already. But this disables pdfs opening inside of Firefox. The only option is to download the file and open it through Adobe.

I want to have Firefox open pdf inside the browser through adobe acrobat, not its own native pdf viewer.

 

Try reinstalling the PDF viewer of your choice, see if that overwrites and changes it's attributes as default PDF Viewer for Firefox.

That would be my next step

 

Okay. I fixed it!

Here are the steps if someone encounters similar problems

1- Go to about:config and change the "pdfjs.disabled" to "true"

2- Make sure inside Firefox>Options>Applications "Use Adobe Acrobat (in Firefox) is selected by default.

3- Follow the directions in this article from Mozilla.

Specifically you need to delete two files inside your profiles directory

mimetypes.rdf
pluginreg.dat

When you restart Firefox, everything will be fine i.e. you can now view pdfs inside Firefox through Adobe Acrobat.

Thanks to everyone who tried to help.

 

Glad you fixed it

Also, thanks for sharing the fix

 

I have noticed on two separate computers that this native reader has frozen momentarily when I have tried to open any of these AV Comparatives links. The odd thing is that the next time I try to open them everything is fine. Even if I close the browser & open it again. I can open normally using the Google Docs Viewer extension. Both versions of Firefox were set-up almost identically on both computers. I'm guessing that this may be an extension clash. I'll probably try to disable this native viewer.

 

Thanks
i was looking for it too!!!

 

So the PDF reader is written in Javascript, but are PDF's opened by it able to execute Javascript?

 

The built in pdf viewer might just be a basic viewer and may not be compatible with all pdfs. While I was searching for a way to disable it, I came across threads where people were talking about how the built-in pdf viewer in Chrome was not compatible with some websites and they needed to use adobe or some other reader for those sites. So, Firefox's pdfs viewer might have similar problems as well.

 

Still being a relative Mozilla n00b, this should help:
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...nloading-them#w_using-the-built-in-pdf-viewer
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-adobe-reader-plugin-view-or-download-pdf-files

 

It's a possibility. I am tending to favour the idea that it is more to do with what default PDF reader you are running to begin with. Most of the problems seem to be with those who are running something other than Adobe Reader. I have set PDF XC to open (Tools Options) instead of the new native default reader & everything seems back to normal (PDF XC opens in Firefox instead of the native default). I have had conversations on other forums with people who have had problems with this Firefox reader & who have Foxit as their default.

I have had a similar problem on three different computers. All of them run PDF XC as the default reader.