topic Re: Don't change my behaviour for PDF treatment to auto-open in Firefox in Discussions

Don't change my behaviour for PDF treatment to auto-open in Firefox

louisvd — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 09:49:12 GMT

I have set my PDFs to always ask. A recent update is now the second time that I have to change the behaviour back, because Firefox updates change it to open in Firefox.

This is VERY bad for me in Internet Banking. When I perform an Electronic Account Payment / Electronic Funds Transfer and then click on the "Proof of Payment" - which should download the PDF to a folder of my choosing - it instead opens the document in Firefox. If I now click on the "back" button, my banking session logs out for security reasons.

Furthermore, when I want to save a PDF, I don't want all PDFs to save in "Downloads" and I don't necessarily want to open and read every PDF that I save immediately. Sometimes I just want to save a document!

Please leave my choices as I set them and stop fiddling with them. You don't know better than me what I want.

Re: Don't change my behaviour for PDF treatment to auto-open in Firefox

Ppo — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 10:39:36 GMT

Same issue with other files treatment that updates change from such &such programm opener to "download".

Re: Don't change my behaviour for PDF treatment to auto-open in Firefox

Mowz — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 18:01:51 GMT

Agreed 100%. Hating new PDF handling.

Re: Don't change my behaviour for PDF treatment to auto-open in Firefox

jscher2000 — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 17:58:38 GMT

@louisvd wrote:
I have set my PDFs to always ask. A recent update is now the second time that I have to change the behaviour back, because Firefox updates change it to open in Firefox.

I think the handling of all download types was reset in Firefox 98, but shouldn't be reset by later versions.

This is VERY bad for me in Internet Banking. When I perform an Electronic Account Payment / Electronic Funds Transfer and then click on the "Proof of Payment" - which should download the PDF to a folder of my choosing - it instead opens the document in Firefox. If I now click on the "back" button, my banking session logs out for security reasons.

Yes, this was fixed so now it will open in a new tab rather than replace your original tab.

Furthermore, when I want to save a PDF, I don't want all PDFs to save in "Downloads" and I don't necessarily want to open and read every PDF that I save immediately. Sometimes I just want to save a document!

When you have "Always ask" and choose an "Open with" option, Firefox saves the file in your "Save files to" folder by default. If you prefer using the Windows Temp or Linux /tmp folder (like Firefox 97 did), Firefox 102 added a preference for that:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. Please keep in mind that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.download.start_downloads_in_tmp_dir and pause while the list is filtered

(C) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true (or click the toggle button toward the right end of the row)

Re: Don't change my behaviour for PDF treatment to auto-open in Firefox

jscher2000 — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 17:59:28 GMT

@Mowz wrote:
Agreed 100%. Hating new PDF handling.

Any particular thing you want to change about it? A lot of tweaks have been made since Firefox 98.

Re: Don't change my behaviour for PDF treatment to auto-open in Firefox

Mowz — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 18:56:13 GMT

Hi @jscher2000, thank you very much for your advice, which I already found elsewhere and applied.

Just wondering how long will this hidden setting last... there's no guarantee it'll be available forever. These solutions look just hacks to hide a bad choice to me. My 2¢.

Re: Don't change my behaviour for PDF treatment to auto-open in Firefox

jscher2000 — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 22:45:00 GMT

@Mowz wrote:
Just wondering how long will this hidden setting last... there's no guarantee it'll be available forever.

Nothing is forever with browsers, that we can be sure of.

Re: Don't change my behaviour for PDF treatment to auto-open in Firefox

Mowz — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 23:08:31 GMT

Yes, especially if Mozilla insists on screwing up what works.