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Ask HN: WTF is wrong with the Canadian visa form?

1 points by asenna ↗ HN
I was planning to visit Canada and so started the application process for a tourist visa.

This process, requires a form to be filled up(IMM 5257). The form is found here - http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/kits/forms/IMM5257E.PDF

The problem is, the form just does not show up! I've tried it on 3 different computers with all types of browsers and Adobe reader. I just get this "Please Wait..." message - http://imgur.com/lEpxVn3

I've even asked my friends to check and they get the same message on their machines.

I sent a mail to their tech team and I got this reply after 10 days today - http://imgur.com/a/UnROS which basically says I need to use the proper PDF viewer.

Meanwhile, being a software developer, I've fixed some pretty complex bugs on client projects. But the Canadian visa process is making me feel dumb :)

This is not really a rant, but I am just curious as to what kind of sorcery might be happening over here.

6 comments

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hubert123
works fine in Internet Explorer. The problem appears to be sitting in front of the PC!! (it is very common that government websites only work on IE)
asenna
That's really weird. That's the first thing I did when it did not work on my macbook.

I checked on a windows 10 machine on IE. Did not work on that either. I'm guessing it has to do with the IE version (older or newer, not sure).

Thanks for replying

hubert123
my IE version is: 11.545.10586.0 if you want to know just try several different compatability modes on your IE until it works
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
jeffmould
Tried it and had same problem with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. To fix, I saved the file and opened it with Adobe Reader outside the browser. Worked fine then. I did get a certificate warning when opening though, so that may be the problem in the browser.
hackerboos
Ha this is still a problem?

I made an application 2 years ago and all the forms that allow you to save information had to be opened (when using a Mac) with an offline PDF viewer. Firefox and Chrome possibly fall back to using preview which doesn't the form saving capabilities it seems.

Read only PDFs from the CIC site work fine though.