Problem w/ cross-browser printing, embedded pdf javascript

Question

protected static byte[] exportReportToPdf(JasperPrint jasperPrint)
                                                      throws JRException {
  JRPdfExporter exporter = new JRPdfExporter();      
  ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
  exporter.setParameter(JRExporterParameter.JASPER_PRINT, jasperPrint);
  exporter.setParameter(JRExporterParameter.OUTPUT_STREAM, baos);
  exporter.setParameter(JRPdfExporterParameter.PDF_JAVASCRIPT,
              "this.print({bUI: true,bSilent: false,bShrinkToFit: true});");
  exporter.exportReport();       
  return baos.toByteArray();
We are using code like this to export a PDF document from a Jasper application.
The line
exporter.setParameter(JRPdfExporterParameter.PDF_JAVASCRIPT,
             "this.print({bUI: true,bSilent: false,bShrinkToFit: true});");
adds embedded JavaScript to send the PDF document directly to the printer.
The expected behavior is that a print dialog will come up with a preview of the PDF document.
This works fine most of the time - except I am having problems about one out of every 5-6 times in Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox.
What happens is - the print preview dialog with the PDF document does not appear or it appears with a blank document in the preview window.
-I've tried a number of different JavaScripts (different params to this.print() via exporter.setParameter -I've tried setting different response headers such as
response.setContentType("application/pdf");
response.setHeader("Content-disposition","inline;  filename=\""
                   + reportName
                   + "\"");
response.setContentLength(baos.size());
these did not seem to help
This seems to be an IE and FF issue. Has anyone ever dealt with this problem? I need to get it to work across all browsers 100% of the time. Perhaps a different approach to accomplish the goal of sending the PDF document export directly to the printer? or a third party library that will work across browsers? Thanks for any advice.

Answer 1

You have to be careful when using the ActiveX control to communicate with system functions like printing.  Because it can be embedded in anything that supports ActiveX, some functionality is limited from being called from JavaScript as it may interfere with the host application.
Check out the IAC API Reference (also included with the SDK) and the methods under AxAcroPDFLib.AxAcroPDF.  There are some print functions in there (like PrintAll) that you can call on the ActiveX control directly, as in from your doPrint() method in your HTML page without using the hostContainer.  You would basically just call:
pdfObject = document.getElementById("PDFObj");
pdfObject.PrintAll();
These methods were designed specifically to work with the ActiveX control when embedded in a host application, and can be used to print a PDF embedded in a web page.