_IEAttach-Problem with Adobe?

[Xaver]

Dear Ladies and Sirs,

I've written a small script which retrieves the URL of a website displayed in the active IE-Window with the handle

$WindowHandle. Everything works fine except when the active IE-Window shows a pdf-file

(e.g. http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/yourhome/technical/pdf/fs34e.pdf).

Then the line $oIE = _IEAttach($WindowHandle, "hwnd") returns 0 for $oIE. Would anybody please be so kind and

give me a hint what went wrong?

By the way:

is there an easy route to save a whole website (including all pictures and text and ideally preserving the layout)

automatically (that is setting the path and filename via AutoIt)?

I tried _IEAction ($oIE, "saveas") but then I still have to negotiate a dialog window where I have to navigate to the

desired folder and to fill in the filename.

When using $sHTML = _IEDocReadHTML ($oIE) the pictures and buttons are sometimes missing in the stored data.

What have I done wrong?

AutoIt is great, but it needs a lot of practice. But I keep trying... and hoping for occasional help from "gurus"...

Best regards,

Xaver

[DaleHohm]

Dear Ladies and Sirs,

I've written a small script which retrieves the URL of a website displayed in the active IE-Window with the handle

$WindowHandle. Everything works fine except when the active IE-Window shows a pdf-file

(e.g. http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/yourhome/technical/pdf/fs34e.pdf).

Then the line $oIE = _IEAttach($WindowHandle, "hwnd") returns 0 for $oIE. Would anybody please be so kind and

give me a hint what went wrong?

I'm amazed that this has never come up before - turns out there are a bunch of issues here. No, _IEAttach cannot attach to a browser displaying a pdf document, nor can _IELoadWait test it's completion status (and thus not _IECreate or _IENavigate).

The issue is that IE is hosting a custom interface for Abobe PDF. There is a document, but the document type is IAcroAXDocShim and it doesn't have the properties of an HTML document (e.g., no readyState property - which explains why all _IELoadWait calls timeout).

I will look into this, but for now it is a limitation.

By the way:

is there an easy route to save a whole website (including all pictures and text and ideally preserving the layout)

automatically (that is setting the path and filename via AutoIt)?

I tried _IEAction ($oIE, "saveas") but then I still have to negotiate a dialog window where I have to navigate to the

desired folder and to fill in the filename.

When using $sHTML = _IEDocReadHTML ($oIE) the pictures and buttons are sometimes missing in the stored data.

What have I done wrong?

AutoIt is great, but it needs a lot of practice. But I keep trying... and hoping for occasional help from "gurus"...

Best regards,

Xaver

Security restrictions in the browser prevent doing a silent Save As... -- sorry, I know of no workaround.

Dale

[seandisanti]

I'm amazed that this has never come up before - turns out there are a bunch of issues here. No, _IEAttach cannot attach to a browser displaying a pdf document, nor can _IELoadWait test it's completion status (and thus not _IECreate or _IENavigate).

The issue is that IE is hosting a custom interface for Abobe PDF. There is a document, but the document type is IAcroAXDocShim and it doesn't have the properties of an HTML document (e.g., no readyState property - which explains why all _IELoadWait calls timeout).

I will look into this, but for now it is a limitation.

Security restrictions in the browser prevent doing a silent Save As... -- sorry, I know of no workaround.

Dale

Anawave WebSnake. It's a program that you can use to download full websites, including directory structure, media etc. you can set the depth and size limitations and just let it go.

[DaleHohm]

Anawave WebSnake. It's a program that you can use to download full websites, including directory structure, media etc. you can set the depth and size limitations and just let it go.

Ah, right - there are quite a few utilities like this that can be used -- thanks cameronsdad

[seandisanti]

Ah, right - there are quite a few utilities like this that can be used -- thanks cameronsdad

No problem, always glad to help. i always liked that one because it would let you retain the directory structure in your downloaded copy.

[libsifa1]

Hello,

I know that this topic posted by Xaver on January 15 2007 is now over 6 years old, but recently, I was concerned too 

My AutoIt script runs on Win7-64 and it is a kind of robot simulating a user that use Oracle Argus Safety (it is a web based app with ASP, so IE mandatory) to collect application response time.  

One of the collected data is time it takes to download a pdf.

With IE9, the biggest issue was the download and security check of the PDF.

-- Strangely, when I do manually what the robot does, it takes one second to pass the security check. When the robot does it,  it takes up than 20 seconds - the adobe setting was PDF not displayed in the browser ---.

To avoid the security check feature of IE9, I defined the pdf to be displayed in the browser. And I got the issue described in this topic. Thanks to DaleHolm to explain why it happens: this makes it clear for me.

I found a way to bypass the issue  - the solution was to use the free brava reader and enable display pdf in browser, software to be found at   http://www.bravaviewer.com/free-software-view-and-print-pdf-tiff-and-csf.

Maybe my post  will help somebody else, even 6 years later ;-)