Open Bug 290609 Opened 20 years ago Updated 3 years ago

Downloaded pdfs not recognized as pdfs

Categories

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

PowerPC
macOS
defect

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: neal.weiner, Unassigned)

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3 When downloading pdfs from certain websites, the first download doesn't see the file as pdf, while if I download again, it recognizes it and opens it. This happens invariably on arxiv.org, the physics preprints archive. For instance, see any of the pdf links on http://arxiv.org/list/hep-ph/new Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Go to http://arxiv.org/list/hep-ph/new 2. Click on any of the pdf links (file will not open) 3. Click on the same link (file will download again and now open) Actual Results: On the first download, the file did not open in preview. On the second, the file did open. Expected Results: The file should have been recognized as pdf and opened in preview on the first download. Right now the file type is seen as "document" and not "pdf"
WFM Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050416 Firefox/1.0+ & Acrobat 7.01
Confirm. And in Camino, the PDF file cannot be opened even if it downloads it several times. - Camino trunk build 2005041622 (v0.8+) - Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; ja-JP; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050416 Firefox/1.0+
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
QA Contact: ali → file.handling
Assignee: bugs → nobody
Are these all dupes of each other? Or perhaps related to another meta-bug? Bug 283038 – Mac: firefox suggests Adobe Acrobat as default PDF app instead of Preview (edit) Bug 354971 – Insufficient options when opening PDF files (edit) Bug 290609 – Downloaded pdfs not recognized as pdfs (edit) Bug 299849 – Mime type ignored for a PDF or JPEG responses. (edit)
I am also experiencing this problem. Additional information can be found on the following mozillazine thread: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=644597 There are a number of ideas in that thread about the possible cause of this bug. Also it has been suggested that https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=311742 may be related.
The following workaround fixes the arxiv.org problem: Install User Agent Switcher extension. Choose a Windows useragent. Reload the arxiv.org page. The reason for this is that arxiv is sending out different file headers when the user agent is Windows to when the UA is Mac! Does this mean the bug lies with arxiv.org? Or should Firefox be able to handle these headers correctly anyway? Safari certainly manages ok.
I have found another site which suffers a similar problem: http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/ Unfortunately to find the relavant links you need to click through via the "register to vote" link and choose a voting district - I couldn't find a direct URL to relevant pages. Clicking on the link halfway down voter registration form page "Download your registration form" delivers a PDF file. Safari saves this as servelet.cfm.pdf Firefox beta 3 for Mac saves this as servelet.cfm Firefox beta 3 for PC also saves the file as servelet.cfm suggesting Firefox for PC also has this problem.
Wells Fargo Online also has this problem with all PDF statements.
Enormous frustration in trying to get http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/4/E/04E076D4-60B2-4D31-BCC7-C4805B558DBB/Bing%20product%20guidelines.pdf to load in pdfjs with one single click.
Severity: normal → S3
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.