As a web application developer (or just as a regular human being), you have probably wondered at some point: why do online PDF documents open in my HTML browser window?
This situation goes back many years, probably since the first browser plugin APIs were devised. It probably just sounded like a good idea to browser developers to integrate different types of documents in the browser window. With PDF though, this has many drawbacks:
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The Adobe Acrobat Reader plugin, like any Adobe application, takes ages to start. While it is starting, your browser is frozen and you can't do anything else.
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When it doesn't work, it crashes your entire browser, or just freezes it (the case with Adobe Acrobat 6.0 and Firefox).
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When it works, usual browser shortcuts don't work, including those to close your window or tab, navigate between tabs, go back and forward, etc.
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To make things worse, there is really no reliable warning when you follow a hyperlink that you are going to open a PDF file. So you hang, crash or freeze without any courtesy notice.
When you combine the above with the fact that there is really no useful purpose in opening PDF documents in your web browser, you understand why yesterday I figured that enough was enough and that I would not suffer this anymore.
The good news is that there is a "very easy way" (it's just four levels of dialogs down, come on!) to change this behavior with Firefox on Windows:
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Go to the "Tools -> Options" menu
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Select the "Downloads" tab
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Open "View and Edit Actions..."
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Enter "pdf" in the "Search" box
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Select "Change Action..."
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Change the selection from "Use this Plugin" to "Open them with the default application", which should point to Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Acrobat Reader, or your favorite PDF viewer
Phew, that was it. While you are at it, you can change all the other entries that use the Adobe plugin to use an external application, make sure mp3 files don't open with Apple QuickTime, etc.