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“Right click and save as” needs to go away

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Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away

#51

Post by tripzilch »

TillE wrote: post #46
raverbashing wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is funny, because I absolutely loathe opening in the browser, I prefer saving it. Chrome and FF PDF viewers are better, but with Acrobat it was a bag of hurt. Also, see: saving is the more generic answer. Save and you can see it, open it and before the Chrome 'save' button you had to re-download it.

On Windows I've yet to see any PDF viewer that's faster or better than Sumatra. All the in-browser ones are a bit slow and lacking in features.

But it's so ... yellow.

Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away

#52

Post by derleth »

mschuster91 wrote: post #28
thristian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using Firefox, you might be interested in the Open In Browser extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-in-brows...

Yes, exactly this extension I talk about in another reply - but I don't use Firefox any more because it creates disk load and swaps heavily on a 5400rpm disk, and it locks up while waiting for disk i/o every ten seconds (every tab switch, in essence). Chrome's single-process-per-page model is better, because the OS can do proper swapping.

Interesting in that I've seen the exact opposite: Chrome hits the disk a lot harder, especially on startup, compared to Firefox.

Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away

#53

Post by drivebyacct2 »

tripzilch wrote: post #50
jrochkind1 wrote: post #13

There are already ways to force browsers to download using HTTP headers. The author says this is a "server-side solutions to front-end problem", okay. But anyways, when pages use this already, it OFTEN pisses me off, when I want to look at a PDF in browser, but the web app/page is forcing me to save it to disk and then re-open it in another app. What we _really_ need, that we _don't_ have a way to do right now -- is…

> when I want to look at a PDF in browser does that ever happen? > but the web app/page is forcing me to save it to disk and then re-open it in another app. because SumatraPDF actually loads faster than Adobe's browser plugin. Plus it's more secure, lacking all the weird scripting crud that shouldn't be in a document format anyway, smaller and open source. Only downside is that it can be really, really, really yellow…

Adobe? Ha. I'll take Chrome or Pdf.js in Firefox, both of which are as fast or faster than the also fast Sumatra.

Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away

#54

Post by bjhoops1 »

tripzilch wrote: post #50
jrochkind1 wrote: post #13

There are already ways to force browsers to download using HTTP headers. The author says this is a "server-side solutions to front-end problem", okay. But anyways, when pages use this already, it OFTEN pisses me off, when I want to look at a PDF in browser, but the web app/page is forcing me to save it to disk and then re-open it in another app. What we _really_ need, that we _don't_ have a way to do right now -- is…

> when I want to look at a PDF in browser does that ever happen? > but the web app/page is forcing me to save it to disk and then re-open it in another app. because SumatraPDF actually loads faster than Adobe's browser plugin. Plus it's more secure, lacking all the weird scripting crud that shouldn't be in a document format anyway, smaller and open source. Only downside is that it can be really, really, really yellow…

>> when I want to look at a PDF in browser > does that ever happen? I do this all the time. I hate downloading crap that I'm probably just going to glance at once then discard.

Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away

#55

Post by steveklabnik »

tripzilch wrote: post #50
jrochkind1 wrote: post #13

There are already ways to force browsers to download using HTTP headers. The author says this is a "server-side solutions to front-end problem", okay. But anyways, when pages use this already, it OFTEN pisses me off, when I want to look at a PDF in browser, but the web app/page is forcing me to save it to disk and then re-open it in another app. What we _really_ need, that we _don't_ have a way to do right now -- is…

> when I want to look at a PDF in browser does that ever happen? > but the web app/page is forcing me to save it to disk and then re-open it in another app. because SumatraPDF actually loads faster than Adobe's browser plugin. Plus it's more secure, lacking all the weird scripting crud that shouldn't be in a document format anyway, smaller and open source. Only downside is that it can be really, really, really yellow…

> does that ever happen?

Yes, I do this all the time. I read a _lot_, and I often don't want to save the file on my hard drive unless I'm going to refer to it again in the future. And if I do, I can just choose "Save" at that point.

Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away

#58

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

Yuck, browser specific things? What about the browsers you didn't mention? I would prefer there to be one standard way, not complicated tricks to be set up for each browser.

My GF also hates to download files for viewing. Why I have to download this video, pdf, audio file, why I can't simply use it in the browser. I simply want to see the content, not to save the file permanenty on computer.

Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away

#59

Post by tripzilch »

mschuster91 wrote: post #2

I HATE sites that force downloading! I often have a 50+ MBit/sec connection and want to be able to choose between having a PDF (e.g. a invoice - all I need is the amount and the bank data) render in the browser so I can discard it after using (here: wiring the money) and not having to do: 1) download it 2) open it 3) do what I want to do 4) delete the file (which requires me to open the download folder, locate the fi…

Don't other browsers have a "temporary downloads" folder? For when you select "open this file with (...)" in the download dialog? Opera does.

Now I finally sort of understand why people like opening PDFs in browser plugins, I suppose ...

> I usually end up with a clusterfuck of a download directory (mine has 20 GB already in half a year, most of it is one-off downloads!)

yeah well but that is your own fault for saving temporary downloads in a non /tmp directory. just put them somewhere where they'll get cleaned out every so often. this is a computer, you don't even have to take the trash out yourself, but it's still up to you to differentiate between "to discard" and "to keep".`

Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away

#60

Post by btipling »

NathanKP wrote: post #12
btipling wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers (or site owners) could probably do a better job of differentiating links with download attributes. Maybe on mouse over show a little download cursor or something.

To show an icon on hover over a link on the browser side it would require browsers to make an HTTP HEAD request for each link to see if it has the "Content-Disposition: Attachment" header. That would add a lot of overhead to the page load, so I don't think it would be added to any browser. However, it seems like a good candidate for a browser plugin for those who have fast connections and don't mind.

Note I said in case the download attribute is set on the link, in which case, no, it would not require any request, it just follows the instructions set in the HTML.
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