<html><body><div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000"><blockquote style="border-left:2px solid #1010FF;margin-left:5px;padding-left:5px;color:#000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;"><b>From: </b>"Jamie Holly" <hovercrafter@earthlink.net><br><b>To: </b>support@drupal.org<br><b>Sent: </b>Wednesday, October 23, 2013 8:50:42 AM<br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [support] AJAX<br><div><br></div><div class="moz-cite-prefix">A PDF is also static. The controls for
the PDF doesn't come from code you put in, but rather from the
mimetype handler on the user's browser and the associated
viewer/plugin (ie - Adobe Reader, Chrome's PDF viewer, etc.). Same
thing as clicking a link to an MP3 and your browser's audio player
opens, so long as your browser has a handler associated with the
MP3 mime-type.<br><div><br></div>
What you are going to need is some browser method of displaying a
PDF within the browser, like FlexPaper, so you control the viewing
mechanism. That you can load into a Colorbox through regular
inline DOM or an iFrame. Even then you still got extra work to do,
either using FlexPaper's desktop publisher or server side (which
means having a VPS or dedicated server so you can install the
needed software).<br><div><br></div>
You can also load the PDF via an iFrame in Colorbox, meaning the
native PDF viewer in the browser will take over. That would be the
easiest route, but also the one with the least amount of control.
<br></div></blockquote><div>I may yet relent and use colorbox, but that would dispel much of the impetus to learn Drupal AJAX, which is something I really want to do right now because I think I need to. Of course, if there is ALWAYS another, easier way to do it, then why bother? The answer to that question is that I can't be sure there is always another easier way to do it until I know a few ways. So, onward...<br></div><div><br></div><div>I claimed I was displaying an image to avoid this whole discussion, but this looks like it might also be informative, so I'm here to listen. Yes. I misspoke when I said the PDF was not "static". I meant the displaying an image was something the browser knew how to do very well but the PDF required more instruction and in this case that instruction takes the form of an <OBJECT> tag:<br></div><div><br></div><div style="padding-left: 30px;"><object data="test.pdf#pagemode=thumbs&view=fitH&scrollbar=0&toolbar=0&statusbar=0&messages=0&navpanes=0" type="application/pdf" width="100%" height="80%"><br><p>It appears your browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, just <a href="test.pdf" target="_blank">download the PDF file.</a></p><br> </object><br></div><div><br></div><div>PDF also requires that the end-user have the necessary client/plug-in, which is a configuration problem as has been suggested, but not one I need to worry about -- yet.<br></div><div><br></div><div>After I can do what I want with Drupal AJAX, then I will investigate colorbox and try to do the same thing or better. Then I'll use the easier of the two. Frankly, if colorbox will do it at all, I will probably go with it because I now plan to use colorbox for the Photo Album piece and it is always better if you can avoid multiple ways to do the same basic thing. Do one thing well.<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div>Chris.</div></div><div style="position: absolute; left: -40px; top: 89px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow: hidden;" data-mce-bogus="1" class="mcePaste" id="_mcePaste"></div></div></body></html>