Browsers and PDFs

Like most financial concerns my credit card company encourages its customers to go paperless by offering statements in PDF format. That's fine with me but I do want to be able to download and save the PDFs for future reference. So I was a bit surprised to find that my default browser, Chrome, didn't display my statements in my installed PDF viewer, Acrobat Reader, it simply displays them in a browser window with no option to save as PDF.

Thinking this might have been caused by a recent major update to Acrobat Reader I uninstalled it and installed Foxit Reader instead, but that made no difference at all - Chrome continued to ignore my PDF reader and displayed the statement in a web page.

Intrigued, I tried this in Firefox, and Firefox immediately called up Foxit without consulting me at all. As there are possible security issues with a website opening an app on your PC I was a bit surprised by this, especially as FF fans always assert it's the safest browser around.

So I then tried it in IE8, which warned me that the website was wanting to open Foxit, offered advice about the risks, and gave me the choice.

One up for IE8 imo, though I'll probably stay with Chrome as default.

Thought this might be of some interest here.
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If you uninstall the Foxit add-on/plugin for Firefox (FX), then it will no longer open Foxit; you may also be able to control the open/download behaviour within the options for the Foxit plugin.

Whenever you install anything, you really should choose the advanced install and actually check what the installer includes by default. Anything you don't want (like browser plugins, toolbars, etc.), don't allow them to be installed. If they're already installed, check what the options are and disable any thing you don't need or fully uninstall it.

 

I don't have any such plugin in FF but that doesn't seem to have deterred it at all. See pic. rolleyes

I've been posting in MG for a year or so now, so was hoping regulars might have sussed that I'm not really the sort who would accept a default install of anything

(must ditch some of those Java consoles!)

 

Check under plugins, if it's not there, FX is calling the default PDF viewer directly.

Tools > Options > Applications, then select your choice for the default action for .pdf filetypes. When installed fresh, FX sets all Applications to 'ask'.

 

Nothing about PDFs there either. Looks a bit like a loophole to me.

 

So, what does FX do about apps installed after FX? Nothing it seems.

 

Did you check FX's plugins?

 

That's in #5. No idea why PDF isn't there as I've had both FX and a PDF reader (Acrobat until today) since I set up Win 7 last year. Only use FX very occasionally so not noticed any of this before.

 

#5 looks to me as if you're referring to, and illustrating, the Options/Applications tab of FX, not the Plugins list.

What 'tweaking' software have you used on this PC? Any registry 'cleaners' used?

Which versions of FX and Foxit reader?

 

I'm going to have to defer this Satrow - Win 7 started intermittently going completely unresponsive yesterday and now it's happening fairly quickly after each hard reset. However I just managed to get the Plugins list up before it went out again a few minutes ago and Foxit is now listed as default. Posting this from OH' PC :-o

 

What you've been seeing may indeed be caused by some underlying glitch.

I hope you get the main rig up and sorted fast - SP1, is it?

 

All sorted now, thanks to Acronis, though it was self-inflicted when I tried to manually remove Networx from the Win 7 registry as it wouldn't uninstall properly itself and didn't even appear in Revo.

As to the original question, it is really just a case of poking around to understand how each browser handles plugins - something I haven't delved into before.

 

And once you've got them working your way, you need to know how your PDF reader handles 'live' links, Java, etc. because that's one of the bigger security threats.

 

I believe this behavior depends on how the web developer designed their site to display PDF files. I just logged onto a Chase account using Chrome and I believe I see the same behavior you described. If I click on the link to view the PDF, a separate, small-sized Chrome window opens to display the credit card statement. And, that small window does not have the full functionality of browser commands available. As you've mentioned, I cannot save a PDF from directly from the browser window. However, I discovered a way to save the PDF file. If I right click in that window and select "Open frame in new tab" or "Open frame in new window", it opens in that manner. Then, from that tab or window, I can click on Chrome's tool/wrench icon at the right end of the web address box and select "Save page as ...", and save the PDF file.

In contrast to this, if I visit irs.gov and open a tax form in Chrome, it opens in that same browser tab and I can save from there. So, again, how Chrome handles PDF depends on the website.

Edit: I tested this using Chrome with Windows Vista. My PDF reader on this computer is Adobe Reader 8.