How Do I Detect the Adobe Acrobat Version Installed in Firefox via JavaScript

Question

I know this can be done in IE by creating an ActiveX object, but how do I do it in FF. The navigator.plugins['Adobe Acrobat'] object lets me know if it's installed or not, but it doesn't contain the version number. Any ideas?

Answer 1

navigator.plugins[n].name where n is the index of the Acrobat plugin is supposed have the version number in it. Unfortunately, starting with Adobe Reader 8, they changed the name to "Adobe PDF Plug-In for Firefox and Netscape", with no version information. So, if this is the name you've detected at least Reader 8, but can't tell versions 8 from 9.

Also, make sure you take into account that Macs don't need Acrobat Reader to render PDF files. (I booted my Windows partition just to test this.)

Answer 2

http://www.pinlady.net/PluginDetect/AdobeReaderDetect.htm

Answer 3

It should be possible to do this like swfobject detects flash version:

SWFObject source code

Answer 4

var p = document.getElementById('Pdf1');
//p.GetVersions()
if(p.GetVersions().indexOf("7.0") != -1)
    alert("Acrobat 7 Found")

Answer 5

This script detects the reader in all browsers - even detects Chrome's PDF Reader...

Acrobat Detection Javascript code

Answer 6

var browser_info = {
    name: null,
    acrobat : null,
    acrobat_ver : null
  };


if(navigator.plugins != null)
  {      
   var acrobat = navigator.plugins['Adobe Acrobat'];
   if(acrobat == null)
   {           
    browser_info.acrobat = null;
    return browser_info;
   }
   browser_info.acrobat = "installed";
   browser_info.acrobat_ver = parseInt(acrobat.version[0]);                   
  }


where navigator is the property of Window