Designers who think their site should behave differently from web standards need to go away. This is completely inappropriate for typical sites. It's only appropriate for web apps that really do deal with files.
“Right click and save as” needs to go away
131–140 of 194 posts
Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away
#132I was hoping that at least IE 8 would support a client side fix for this, but hey who would ever assume that IE would support something.
Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away
#133There 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…
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.
"Before the Chrome save button"? What does that even mean? Half the time I see people praising Chrome it's because of something thoroughly mundane, like an address bar, or saving files, or links. Did you guys browse the web using potatoes before you got Chrome, or what?
Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away
#134There 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…
Agreed. Depending on context (of the content and myself!), sometimes I'll want to save and sometimes not.
A prompt from the browser would be the best option, but alternatively, I'd want the site to offer me an option as to how the external file should be handled. If the browser doesn't implement it, it says that the "Right click to save" nonsense could make sense.
Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away
#135"There are or course other ways of forcing file downloads, such as adding certain configuration to your .htaccess file, but I think server-side solutions to front-end problems should be avoided whenever possible." WOW. So http have the solution for that, but as you are lazy, you want to reinvent the wheel and do it on your own, forgetting that the fronting you are talking about is running over http. The http header h…
I'm not entirely sure that I've grasped all of what you're saying here, but the download attribute is in the WHATWG HTML specification, and can hardly be considered OP himself trying to reinvent the wheel.
Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away
#136There 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…
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.
It's funny how many Windows users seem to think the PDF format is intrinsically slow, and all because of Acrobat Reader. Safari on OS X renders a PDF just as quickly as any other webpage, and always has.
Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away
#137For everyone complaining that they don't want to be forced to download--just have two buttons: March Invoice: View - Download This is much clearer for the average user than a single link with hidden right click functionality. Currently clicking on a link you have no idea what you're going to get.
Problem is that if the browser doesn't support viewing of the file, then both links will cause a download, which can be confusing to the user. I think we need a way to see if a MIME type of a file is supported by the browser (including its plugins.)
Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
As long as people (mostly academia and research orgs) continue to publish their content exclusively in PDF form, then there will be a need to look at that content in a web browser. I work at a university and it is amazing at how much content exists only as a PDF, even if it would be better suited as regular old HTML content. Trying to turn that ship around would also interfere with numerous business processes and ent…
To be fair, there are a number of advantages to having content in PDF's rather than HTML. For example,
1. The formatting is more static. Papers and memos and other documents are created and intended to be artifacts, not just mutable information, and PDFs can preserve that better. In 10 years, the PDF will look more like it did originally than HTML in tomorrow's browsers.
2. They're more durable. As a self-contained document, they don't rely on externally served files such as JavaScript and CSS. Ideally most HTML files are capable of presenting their semantic content even when you strip all that away, but that's easy to get wrong (especially with the advent of client-side templating and JavaScript frameworks). It's easier to archive a PDF than a web page, just save it to a thumb drive and it's pretty much guaranteed to work.
3. It's every bit as future-proof as HTML. With multiple independent implementations of PDF viewers, many of which are open source, the format is not going away. It will be readable for years to come.
Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ah, but date added is not always equal to the date of the invoice. Ex: download 2013-01-01-invoice.pdf today (2013-04-23).
Re: “Right click and save as” needs to go away
#140This appears to be trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist with a solution that is more problematic than the problem it attempts to solve.
If my browser can handle pdfs, I probably want to view them using the browser[1].
If my browser can't handle pdfs, it will be forced to download them anyway.
If my browser can handle pdfs, but I want to save it/view it with another program, I can use right-click+save as.
By contrast, a pdf which I want to view in-browser, but which forces the browser to download it instead is just a nuisance. Even if there were a 'right-click+don't save it, just view it in browser', I don't know that I need to use it until I have tried clicking the link.
In general terms: You publish content on the web, I decide how I view it. Try to force my hand and you'll just annoy me into going elsewhere.
[1] If the browser supports pdfs by default, but I prefer to view them with somthing else, there are usually settings to tell the browser how to handle different file types.