Hey guys

Today I got so annyed by firefox’s default behaviour of downloading each and every PDF file to my disk that I went searching for a solution until I had the problem fixed. And it seems like I have finally found it. I have linked the solution but here is the explanation in short:

Firefox determines what kind of file type it is based on the content-type header it receives from the server. Another header is the content-disposition header with which the server specifies how the file should be handled. The two most important options here are attachment and inline.

  • inline is the default if not otherwise specified, and means the browser will handle the file according to the behavior set in the browser settings.
  • attachment means to always download the file

It is therefore possible that some pdf files are downloaded by force and others are handled according to the behavior specified in the settings. To force the latter in any case, you can proceed as follows:

  1. go to about:config
  2. change browser.download.open_pdf_attachments_inline to true

Thank you jscher2000 for the solution!


cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9785046

  • PropaGandalfOP
    link
    11 year ago

    I know but I don’t want it to be shown in the downloads panel or get any notification I just want it to store it temporarily in the browser cache and ooen it in a new tab. Like a regular website. And if I really want to download something it should go directly to my regular download folder.