Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Right click and save as” needs to go away

svarden.se

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 194 posts

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

#121

Post by replax »

sspiff wrote: post #79
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.

I agree that the Acrobat plugin was a pain (and I always made sure to disable it in Firefox), but I absolutely love the Firefox in-browser PDF viewer. It doesn't lock up the PC while loading, and it has a convenient download button that doesn't seem to redownload the PDF when clicked (much like saving an already loaded image).

It might have something to do with my PC (i7 x220) but I cannot stand the Firefox viewer for anything but plain text. I find it very lacking in terms of performance compared to a native pdf viewer. Everytime a somewhat complex pdf opens up (mostly formulas, few images), the fan begins to rev up significantly..

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

#122

Post by DigitalTurk »

Terretta wrote: post #116
DigitalTurk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You, serving the file, presumably have an idea what you want the user to do with the file. The .html page you propose editing is server side. The file being served is server side. The server configuration is server side. The problem is when you want to offer both a view and a download link. Your solution requires offering two different URLs for that, which also breaks caching in the case where a user first wants to…

On the contrary, our solution as implemented on our CDN uses a query string parameter numbered 1 - 8 to select one of those sets which are then set by the server in the response. So you can choose it on the fly for any file.

But as far as browsers are concerned http://x.com?y and http://x.com?z are two different URLs, right?

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

#123

Post by mschuster91 »

Sprint wrote: post #105
Dylan16807 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That folder never gets cleared.

From what I know applications are meant to clean up after themselves.

But rarely, applications do this. The only notable exceptions is Winrar temp-extractions and some installers. Most other products simply let their stuff rot in TEMP hell.

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

#124

Post by pseut »

vy8vWJlco wrote: post #113
chrisfarms wrote: post #18

One small nitpick: please please don't make all your files download with a single filename. In the article it gives an example of "fixing" a hideous generated filename like "203759-fs3.pdf" to download as "invoice.pdf". Yes this is a little nicer, but please be _even_ nicer and put other relevant info in the filename, "invoice-2013-01-01.pdf" is infinitely more useful to me. Context: My bank forces statement download…

2013-01-01-invoice.pdf sorts better for my purposes.

yeah, but sorting files by date added is usually trivial, so I'd rather have the option of grouping all of the invoices together. But I completely agree that people should name these files to make sorting easier and more useful.

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

#125

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

alxeder wrote: post #71
jrochkind1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Chrome didn't offer any way to 'save as' a PDF that it was displaying (really?!?), that's clearly Chrome's problem.

there are at least 3 ways to save an opened pdf with chromes viewer.

Unless it comes from one of a number of journal or research sites, where at least one of those options will no longer work.

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

#126

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

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.

with the HTML5 option you could just use CSS:

    a[download]:after {
      /* add an icon or something */
    }

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

#127

Post by Terretta »

DigitalTurk wrote: post #122
Terretta wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, our solution as implemented on our CDN uses a query string parameter numbered 1 - 8 to select one of those sets which are then set by the server in the response. So you can choose it on the fly for any file.

But as far as browsers are concerned http://x.com?y and http://x.com?z are two different URLs, right?

Sorry, I was replying about different URLs, you're focused on the caching question. Yes, most browsers would retrieve again. That's the price you pay for having the same file be able to be viewed or able to force a download.

As a VDN (video delivery network) we're focused on 100MB - 8GB video files, so our clients' primary goal is to avoid ever having the file attempt to display in the browser unless as a media URL purposely supplied to an embedded player. In general a raw video file URL would be for a download, and forcing Content Disposition saves having to explain the "Right-click, Save As..." dance regardless of browser.

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

#128

Post by Aardwolf »

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…

I would love to have an option in the right click menu to IGNORE the HTTP headers. For example, sometimes there is a link to an image like a jpg or a png that then forces you to download it. It REFUSES to ever render it in your browser. A right click option to ignore all MIME types and show it based on extention or magic bytes in the file would be AWESOME. Why do no browsers have that?

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

#129

Post by GhotiFish »

gcr wrote: post #72
GhotiFish wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so would the browser be enforcing that? Or the server? Because both options are unacceptable.

Why are both unacceptable? Server enforcing downloading/viewing measn the user couldn't override its choice, but providing both links avoids that issue.

If the browser presented both choices, it wouldn't be able to distinguish by situation, so either it would hide downloading inappropriately, or it would present it inappropriately.

If the server was in charge, then most websites would screw it up through incompetence or malice.

Two links for every link, or have the server (an entity who doesn't necessarily have the users interest in mind) having more control over what the user can do with the content it sends.

Both options suck.

To be fair? I got responses in favor of both options.

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

#130

Post by andrethegiant »

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…

I like the current method in Safari that opens PDFs in browser by default, but if I wast to save the PDF to disk, I just Option-click.
Post reply on HN