ACTIONSCRIPT 3 Developer’s Guide en

Chapter 28: Adding PDF content in AIR
Adobe AIR 1.0 and later
Applications running in Adobe® AIR® can render not only SWF and HTML content, but also PDF content. AIR
applications render PDF content using the HTMLLoader class, the WebKit engine, and the Adobe® Reader® browser
plug-in. In an AIR application, PDF content can either stretch across the full height and width of your application or
alternatively as a portion of the interface. The Adobe Reader browser plug-in controls display of PDF files in an AIR
application. modifications to the Reader toolbar interface (such as controls for position, anchoring, and visibility)
persist in subsequent viewing of PDF files in both AIR applications and the browser.
Important: To render PDF content in AIR, the user must have Adobe Reader or Adobe® Acrobat® version 8.1 or higher
installed.
Detecting PDF Capability
Adobe AIR 1.0 and later
If the user does not have Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat 8.1 or higher, PDF content is not displayed in an AIR
application. To detect if a user can render PDF content, first check the HTMLLoader.pdfCapability property. This
property is set to one of the following constants of the HTMLPDFCapability class:
Constant Description
HTMLPDFCapability.STATUS_OK A sufficient version (8.1 or greater) of Adobe Reader is detected and
PDF content can be loaded into an HTMLLoader object.
HTMLPDFCapability.ERROR_INSTALLED_READER_NOT_FOUND No version of Adobe Reader is detected. An HTMLLoader object
cannot display PDF content.
HTMLPDFCapability.ERROR_INSTALLED_READER_TOO_OLD Adobe Reader has been detected, but the version is too old. An
HTMLLoader object cannot display PDF content.
HTMLPDFCapability.ERROR_PREFERRED_READER_TOO_OLD A sufficient version (8.1 or later) of Adobe Reader is detected, but the
version of Adobe Reader that is set up to handle PDF content is older
than Reader 8.1. An HTMLLoader object cannot display PDF content.
On Windows, if Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader version 7.x or above is running on the user's system, that version is
used even if a later version that supports loading PDF is installed. In this case, if the value of the pdfCapability
property is HTMLPDFCapability.STATUS_OK, when an AIR application attempts to load PDF content, the older
version of Acrobat or Reader displays an alert (and no exception is thrown in the AIR application). If this is a possible
situation for your end users, consider providing them with instructions to close Acrobat while running your
application. You may want to display these instructions if the PDF content does not load within an acceptable time
frame.
On Linux, AIR looks for Adobe Reader in the PATH exported by the user (if it contains the acroread command) and
in the /opt/Adobe/Reader directory.
The following code detects whether a user can display PDF content in an AIR application. If the user cannot display
PDF, the code traces the error code that corresponds to the HTMLPDFCapability error object:
Last updated 6/6/2012
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