SuperContainer Thumbnails on Tomcat Install

[Todd Weller]

I'm in the process of determining if I'm doing something wrong, or if this is just how the system is designed to work.

Our system is for digital storage of packing slips, receiving reports and similar documents on our primary file server. These documents are either scanned from the physical printouts or generated by FileMaker's internal PDF engine. All documents are uploaded to the server using the Companion Plug-in so that we can control the document name once it hits the server.

Using the SuperContainer/Files/... file path, the web viewer displays the document name, size and upload date. The only way I can get a "preview" image to display in the web viewer is by using the SuperContainer/RawData/... file path. While I loose the interaction with the web viewer, I wasn't concerned about this "fix" since I was already using the plug-in to upload my documents. This is running very well in our office on our Mac OS 10.5 desktop machines and a few 10.6 machines we are evaluating before upgrading all departments.

The problem comes when dealing with our external sales offices. In all cases, they remotely access a Windows terminal server over a VPN connection. Once connected to the terminal server, they access FileMaker, which makes them appear as "local" user to the FileMaker server. In the database files where we are using SuperContainer, when the tab containing the web viewer becomes active, Adobe Acrobat is launched to show the preview of the document, rather than showing the preview in the web viewer as it does on the Macs. The only way I can stop this from happening is to revert the web viewer path back to the default "Files" version of the file path, but then I'm back to having no preview available for the user.

Is this scenario a limitation of our install - Tomcat install on a file server instead of local or FileMaker Server install? Or is there a way to generate the thumbnails when the file is uploaded with the plug in? Or can the web viewer properties be changed so that this external Acrobat window does not come up unless the user explicitly wants to see the preview?

Any insight and/or assistance into this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, kindly.

Here is some software installation information:

File Server:

Mac OS X Server 10.5.7 ; Apache Tomcat Ver. 6.0.18

FileMaker Server:

Mac OS X Server 10.5.7 ; FileMaker Server Advanced 10.0.2.206

Typical Office Computer:

Mac OS X 10.5.8 ; FileMaker Pro 10.0v3

Development Computer:

Mac OS X 10.6.1 ; FileMaker Pro Advanced 10.0v3

Terminal Server (Remote Office Access):

Windows XP ; FileMaker Pro 10.0v3

[Smef]

SuperContainer will not generate previews of pdfs unless SuperContainer is running in stand-alone mode on a mac. SuperContainer in a stand-alone deployment uses the system's built in preview generation, which is why only a mac server can generate the preview the pdf. This is the only limitation between deployment options and OSes.

When you use the /RawData/ URL you are not actually previewing the image. You are, in fact, downloading the entire pdf and loading it using either IE of Safari's method of handling pdfs, which is why you lose the SuperContainer functionality. Using the RawData URL is as if you were linking to the original file itself instead of a SuperContainer URL.

I hope this clears things up for you.

[Todd Weller]

Thank you for the clarification, David. I thought this might be the case but wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious.