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Why does Firefox display a box around hotlinks in my pdf document?

Mark
Mark
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Firefox is displayng a thin black line around each of the hotlinks in a pdf that I'm viewing online using the built-in Adobe viewer (see sample screenshot attached). It occures for al hotlinks in this document (bookmarks, URL links, email addresses, etc.). It only happens in this document, no others. I can display this document correctly n Chrome, or download it and open it in Adobe Reader XI on my Mac. The document was created using Magix Xara Page & Layout Design.

Firefox is displayng a thin black line around each of the hotlinks in a pdf that I'm viewing online using the built-in Adobe viewer (see sample screenshot attached). It occures for al hotlinks in this document (bookmarks, URL links, email addresses, etc.). It only happens in this document, no others. I can display this document correctly n Chrome, or download it and open it in Adobe Reader XI on my Mac. The document was created using Magix Xara Page & Layout Design.
Attached screenshots

All Replies (3)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Hi Melcher, Firefox's built-in PDF viewer is not as advanced as Adobe Reader or other PDF viewers, and it sometimes shows things that -- if it were fully compliant -- it should not show, like hidden layers.

Over time, these bugs are swatted one by one, but progress can be slow for uncommon issues.

Do you want to share a link to that PDF, if it's on a public site, for someone to take a closer look?

Mark
Mark Question owner
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Sure. It’s available here: https://cvmg.ca/resources/Au83gabGuDEC94zz/2019/CVMG%20News-5201-Jan%202018.pdf

To see a similar file that doesn’t do the boxes, try this one: https://cvmg.ca/resources/Au83gabGuDEC94zz/2018/CVMG%20News-5112-Dec-2018.pdf

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Hi Melcher, I think it's a combination of things: differences between the two converters, and between Firefox and Acrobat.

The more recent newsletter has clickable hotspots (in Firefox's viewer, these are called link annotations), and the older newsletter does not. This probably is a difference between Xara (preserves links) and Distiller (does not preserve links).

Firefox's viewer has a built-in style rule to show a solid 1px black border around link annotations, and a yellow background when they are hovered with the mouse. I don't think there is a way to avoid or influence that in the current design.

It would be more aesthetically appealing for the viewer to show a light dotted outline, or no outline until hovered, but I don't know whether that would be considered for urgent implementation (i.e., within 3-6 months). You can file a new issue here to start the conversation:

https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/issues

(As an aside, the new file name should have Jan 2019.)