Implicit ACF Installation fails to download AcrobatControl.CAB

Question

Hello,
I would like to understand the mechanism of the implicit ACF installation mentioned in SAP note 766191 - "Installation of Active Component Framework". It is not described in detail in that note. We can not roll out the xACF software explicitely on all of our PCs, so we would like the server to push the needed ACF components to the client PCs automatically. We need the ACF to display Adobe interactive PDF forms.
As I understand so far, when you implement an HTML <object> on a website that tries to activate an ActiveX element (like in our case the AdobeControl to display PDFs) it downloads the needed code automatically in case it is not present on the client PC. This is done through the <codebase> parameter of the <object> element. The download is an AdobeControl.CAB, which gets transferred to the client and then installs various other needed files. It seems as if this mechanism does not work in our system, since we are not able to see any PDFs.
My questions are:
1. Is this AdobeControl.CAB all that is needed for a correct functioning of the ACF installation and to view an interactive PDF in the Internet Explorer on the client PC?
2. Where in the NW04 SPS18 configuration can I control the download behavior of this active component, i.e. the protocol (http vs. https) and port (80 vs. 443)? The link to AdobeControl.CAB in the HTML page source looks like this:
codebase="http://lsocp-jci.xyz.de:80/webdynpro/resources/sap.com/tcwddispwda/global/activeComp/AdobeControl.CAB#version=6,3018,0,3"
Thanks,
Daniel.

Answer 1

Hi Daniel,
Yes ACF is required to view the adobe interactive forms on browser. ACF integrates Java applets and activex controls on your machine and thus enables the user to view the PDF document in the browser.
As far as my knowledge is concerned, if you design the interactive forms in the NWDS version 7.0.13 or above, it has an option "Native" in the interactive form property displayType. Here if you provide the type as native this works on ZCI technology (zero client installation). So, you won't need this ACF installation on your machines and you will be able to view the form always without any other software.
In case your form is already designed you will need to:
1. Check the ADS (Adobe document service) settings on the server which obstructs displaying the PDF form in the client machine's browser.
2. Install the latest version of ACF which you can download form SAP service market place.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Gaurav