434103 - Setting action to 'Always ask' for 'Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Document' files doesn't work

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Neville]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008051206 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008051206 Firefox/3.0

Setting options for how PDF files should be handled by Firefox 3 RC1 doesn't work. Whenever I click on a link to a PDF file, it still loads within the browser window automatically, even though I've specified that I want to be asked what to do whenever PDF files are encountered.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Tools -> Options... -> Applications
2. For files of type 'Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Document' specify 'Always ask'
3. Click on a link to a PDF file
Actual Results:  
PDF document is automatically displayed within the browser.

Expected Results:  
A prompt asking me what I want to do with the file.

Firefox should ask me what I want to do, e.g. display it or save it. This worked fine in Firefox 2.

Comment 1

[cmtalbert]

Ok This is a little different in Firefox 3.  What is going on here is that Adobe Reader is installing BOTH a content handler and a plugin.  In Tools->Options from Firefox, you are tweaking the settings for the content handler.  However, the plugin remains active and is causing the in-browser display.  Plugins are third party tools that install themselves into the browser.  Therefore, to change this behavior you have to do the following:

1. Open Adobe Acrobat Reader (I'm using version 8)
2. Edit->Preferences
3. Click on the "Internet" item in the list on the left
4. UNCHECK the "display PDF in browser" check box. I also unchecked the "Allow fast web view" and the "Allow speculative downloading in the background" too, but I don't think those are related to this problem per se.

Close Adobe Reader, restart firefox.

Now when you go back to your PDF file, firefox will ask you what you want to do when you click on the item.

So...this bug is really that it isn't obvious how to configure a plugin, especially when the plugin also installs itself as a content handler.  I'm not sure what we can do in the browser to make this easier on folks.

I'm going to throw this to support, I think it's worthy of going up on support.mozilla.com at the very least.

Changing this to "Invalid" as it's really an adobe bug, unless we can figure out a way to improve the UX(user experience) for this in the browser.

Comment 2

[cmtalbert]

Actually, in Firefox 3, there is an even easier way to work around this behavior that doesn't involve going into Adobe Acrobat at all.

== Steps ==
1. Set everything under Tools->Options Applications tab that has to do with Adobe PDF types to "Always Ask"
2. Go to Tools->Add-Ons
3. Select the Plugins tab.
4. Then click on the Disable button to disable the plug in

After this, Firefox will always ask you what to do with the Adobe PDF files.