Hi all,

I subscribe to Morningstar and download their PDF reports. Normally I use firefox (for both Windows and Linux). Normally this is not a problem. However, I tried downloading a PDF report today with firefox (for both Windows and Linux) and could not do so. Interestingly, it worked when I used Windows / internet explorer.

Questions

1) Has anyone else had this specific problem, or at least this general problem of Linux / Firefox?

2) How can I determine if this is a problem with the website (morningstar.com) or my web browser (firefox)?

Computer Info

OS: XP / Mepis 7.0
Firefox: XP - recent version but I don't recall exactly / Mepis - 2.0.0.11
Other: Yes, I have adblock and noscript but they never presented this problem - Also I turned them off and still had the problem.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Did it give any kind of an error message?


One thing you might try is to have Firefox tell the website it is Internet Explorer. I believe there is still a User Agent Switcher extenesion that will do this, as well as the PrefBar extension has limited capability for this. Maybe there are others. You can manually edit about:config but I recommend you let an extension handle it.

In firefox linux, no message, just a blank white display

* In firefox windows, the following message: "Acrobat Plugin: This operation is not allowed" The page is blank, aside from that error message.

Anyone have any thoughts? I emailed the website but their tech support is about as useful as an @$$hole on your elbow.

* In windows, I tried it while running firefox as admin and guest - failed both times. Interestingly, it worked with internet explorer as admin but not as guest. This makes me think it is something specific to the website and not firefox, though I could be wrong. This website has caused trouble with firefox in the past with older versions, but not like this.

The difference in IE between admin and guest sounds really strange to me, but then I am not all that familiar with IE or MS Windows in general.

Looking around Morningstar's website I noticed something published in 2005 where they said they expected their website to be fully functional with Firefox "within 12 months." But elsewhere they said that only IE, Netscape, and AOL were supported.

I'm on a fishing expedition here, but just general things you might check:

• Make sure your browser is accepting all cookies for this site.
• Try clearing all cookies and cache prior to logging into the site.
• If it is possible try downloading the PDF as a file rather than viewing it in the browser.
• As mentioned before, change Firefox's user agent string to indicate to the website that the browser is IE running on MS.

Good luck.

blackhole54, et al:

Thanks for the tips...I will look into them.

A quick question regarding Firefox's "user agent string": Would that apply to Windows only, or could I try that in my Linux Firefox?

Thanks again!

It should not matter what platform it is running on. Do look into the extension(s) that will handle this for you so that changing the user agentstring requires only a couple of clicks. (And that tip is from someone who likes the command line!)