Re: Acrobat reader
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 09:07:15 -0400, Frank McCormick wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:23:16 -0500 John Hasler wrote:
> > Jerome BENOIT writes:
> > > Why do you not install acroread from debian multi-media ?
> >
> > Some of us prefer not to install closed-source software when we can
> > avoid it.
>
> Including me. I am still wondering what these websites are looking
> for. They tell you you don't have Adobe even before Firefox has a
> chance to give you a prompt
There are websites that check for the presence of the acroread plugin
before they even give you the chance to download a PDF. This is usually
a misguided attempt at being user friendly: Someone assumes that the
visitors cannot handle PDFs without the plugin and that they therefore
do not want to waste time and bandwidth by downloading any such files.
Turning off javascript should disable the plugin detection routine;
unfortunately this often breaks other functionality of the website. If
the approach of the website relies on a redirect then it might be
possible to foil the scheme with a redirect-blocking plugin. The most
general solution to this problem is analysing the detection routine and
devising a specific counter mechanism that leaves the rest of the
website functional, for example by means of a filtering proxy, a
targeted adblock rule or a greasemonkey script.
--
Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
Florian |
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