Can't display PDF from HTTPS in IE 8 (on 64-bi

Question

I have a home-grown HTTPS server that serves up simple files (it's embedded within my app). It works great -- been using it forever.

Recently added SSL support -- Chrome, FireFox and IE all like it and load pages just fine.

The problem I find is when I try to load a PDF file over the HTTPS connection. For some reason, the PDF never displays in IE 8 (64-bit on 64-bit Vista). It works fine in Chrome. And it works fine in IE 8 when using plain HTTP -- only fails when using HTTPS.

NOTE: When IE 8 is mentioned, it's 32-bit IE 8 on 64-bit Vista, although the 64-bit IE 8 has the same behavior.

That makes me think it's some sort of IE 8/HTTPS/PDF/64-bit OS issue, but I'm not sure.

DebugBar for IE 8 shows the request and response went exactly as expected -- no errors at all. IE 8 doesn't show any errors or anything -- pure white screen (or the page that was displayed before I tried to load the PDF). Cleared cache/cookies/etc.

Are there any known issues with IE/PDF/HTTPS?

Answer 1

I ran into this same problem, and could only get it to work by asking the user to modify their security settings to turn off Do not save encrypted pages to disk in the Advanced tab of the Internet Options dialog: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/812935

...then with the immediate panic over, I started looking at the code (ASP.NET using VB). I used fiddler and found that even when I wasn't specifying the cache-control header it seemed that the Framework was automatically specifying no-store for me. The key to solving the issue was actually in this PHP question. By setting the cache-control header to max-age=1 the file would be cached for 1 second, just long enough for Adobe Reader to pick it up from the disk and load it into memory. I updated our code to generate the PDF as follows:

Response.ClearContent()
Response.ClearHeaders()
Response.AddHeader("cache-control", "max-age=1")
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf"
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=whatever.pdf")
Response.AddHeader("content-length", mem_stream.Length.ToString)
Response.BinaryWrite(mem_stream.ToArray())
Response.Flush()
Response.End()                                

Update: I thought it was working, but I guess I spoke too soon. I created a new question to follow through with this issue.

Answer 2

My solution (it took us days of playing around with headers to get this to work):

            if (System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Browser.Browser == "InternetExplorer"
                && System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Browser.Version == "8.0")
            {
                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();
                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.ClearContent();
                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.ClearHeaders();
                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";

                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.AppendHeader("Pragma", "public");
                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "private, max-age=60");
                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.AppendHeader("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "binary");

                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=" + document.Filename);
                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("content-length", document.Data.LongLength.ToString());

                System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.BinaryWrite(document.Data);
            }

Hope that helps someone