I am using Google Doc Viewer to display local PDFs on our site (override for IE7 and 8 because of permissions issue): http://www.scad.edu/news/index.cfm?pageid=338423. The issue is that sometimes people have experienced the PDF not being displayed, being replaced with an iframed Google sign in page. I am having a lot of difficulty reproducing these results, trying several browsers, even clearing my entire browser cache, using off-site browsers such as Adobe BrowserLabs and BrowserShots, etc. I know the error is occurring on an OS X 10.5 machine running Firefox 3.5.2 and on another machine with similar software. The not-so-technical personnel are claiming it happens after not having signed into Google for a week or so, but it displays fine for me when I am signed out on a fresh install. And yes, I have witnessed the issue several times on their machines but simply can not reproduce it.
Please advise on how to hunt down this bug. I can’t find anyone else with the same issue. I am considering just switching to Scribd PDF viewer.
The not-so-technical personal may actually be on to something. This issue seems to occur when a Google user’s session expires. The user is presented with the login form instead of the document, even when the viewer is embedded in an iframe. Apparently it’s still an unresolved bug. Check out this question for more details:
Embedded Google Docs PDF viewer displays login page rather than PDF
I hope they fix this 🙂