Re: Websites which insist upon Adobe Acrobat
On 2009-09-03 15:43 +0200, Charles wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:15:05 +0200
> Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> wrote:
>
>> On 2009-09-02 23:44 +0200, Charles wrote:
>>
>> > I have run across several websites lately which insist they cannot
>> > download PDF files to you because you don't have Adobe Acrobat
>> > installed.
>>
>> To say the truth, I cannot remember having ever met such a website
>> myself. Everyone serves PDF files as MIME type application/pdf,
>> and my browser offers the choice between saving them and opening
>> them in an external PDF viewer.
>
> Not everyone.
> When the cursor is over the item all you see (at the bottom of the
> firefox screen) is javascript commands...not the usual http:// stuff
> (usually ending in whatever.pdf. When you click on the item, that's
> when it tells you you need Adobe..and even offers a link to download
> it :)
Fortunately I almost never notice such things, since Javascript is
usually turned off.
>> Could you give an example so that we can reproduce your problem?
>>
>
> The porition of the site on which I had the problem is my personal
> email from the government. I just checked and there are areas where
> forms are offered to the public in the normal http://whatever.pdf
> format. Those I can right click on and view or download. But the
> password-protected email section doesn't offer that and that's where
> the site insists upon Adobe. I ended up going to my wife's machine
> (Windows XP) and reading the mail there. Maybe the site is looking at
> the operating system ??
Try changing your browser's User-Agent string to find out. Also,
firebug might be useful to debug their Javascript.
Sven
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