Many modern browsers have changed the way that they handle Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. Traditionally, the Adobe PDF plugin was installed and this was used automatically to load and display PDF documents. However, as this was a proprietary solution, browser makers have tried to implement their own solution to avoid the reliance on a third party product with mixed success.
A consequence of this is that many browsers have problems handling links embedded in documents that link to other documents in our website. In particular, the Committee Agendas link to papers and other documents necessary for the committee. These links do not work in the version of Internet Explorer used in the tiled Modern/Universal user interface. The default PDF viewer in Firefox and Chrome do not work either.
The recommended solution is to install either the Acrobat or another PDF viewer and then switch to the relevant plugin in your browser.
Advice from Adobe
Google Chrome
In the Chrome address bar, type chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments, then enter. You will be presented with options to manage how PDFs are opened.
Viewing PDFS in Chrome with Adobe Acrobat
Internet Explorer
The desktop version of Internet Explorer doesn't usually exhibit this problem. However, the version that runs in the Modern/Universal user interface in Windows 8+ downloads the PDF document and opens it outside the web browser. This means that it is impossible to navigate any links within the document as it is looking for the document on your computer. You need to use the desktop version of Internet Explorer for any chance of this working.
Mozilla Firefox
Firefox on Windows
The method to change the way that Firefox handles PDF documents involves changing the options in the Applications panel of the Firefox Options window.
The Applications panel allows you to choose how Firefox handles different types of files. For each content type Firefox recognises, you may select an action that Firefox will use to handle that type of content. You can view the file content in the Firefox window with Firefox for natively supported formats (podcast, web feed, PDF) or with a plugin, open the file with an application installed on your computer (or in some cases, with a web application), or you can save the file to your downloads folder.
PDF Handling in Firefox
Firefox on Mac OS
- Select Firefox.
- Choose Preferences > Applications.
- Select a relevant content type from the Content Type column.
- Associate the content type with the application to open the PDF. For example, to use the Acrobat plug-in within the browser, choose Use Adobe Acrobat NPAPI Plug-in.