[Ham-Mac] Safari v6.0 and ARRL's DXCC Web Page

[Dick Kriss]

I used the new Safari v6.0 to enter data for DX QSL cards to be reviewed by one of the ARRL Card Checkers and ran into an issue with the saved .pdf file.  

I used the ARRL DXCC form for listing QSL cards to be checked at <https://p1k.arrl.org/onlinedxcc/>, clicked on "Enter QSLs" and had no problem entering or saving the data on the ARRL server. The web page has a button that says "View All My QSLs (as a PDF document)" and it displayed perfect.  I wanted to save a copy so I used the Safari File "Save As" command to save the OnlineDXCC_QSLs.pdf file to my desktop. 

This is where I ran into trouble. The Safari saved .pdf document could not be read by anything. The error note said the file was bad and could not be repaired. I tried again but this time used the Safari Print option to save as a PDF file. I had the same problem that the saved .pdf could not be read. At the ARRL's suggestion I tried Firefox v14 and it worked perfect. The difference between the two browsers seems to be Safari renders documents inside Safari where Firefox opens documents in Adobe Reader. 

To make a long story a little shorter the Safari "Save As" and "Print to PDF" problem was the result of a conflict with an old Adobe plugin. I deleted the AdobePDFViewer.plugin and Safari v6.0 worked perfect.  The Safari saved .pdf could be read by anything. This is a Catch-22 in that Apple needs to fix Safari or Adobe needs to update their plugin. Until Apple and Adobe get together my workaround was to delete the Adobe plugin and it has not been missed. The problem could be unique to my setup and may not be a Safari or Adobe issue.

The bottom line is if you run into an issue with the Safari v6.0 "Save As" option, try removing any Adobe plugins at /Library/Internet Plugins/.


73 Dick AA5VU