Hmmmm... you are right. I had tried Staples on my home PC last night and assumed it was at their end. Now that I try it on my PC it is the default using the plugin.
So... is there any way to do this?
Main Topics
Browse All TopicsHow do you override the default behaviour of the browser so PDFs always open with Adobe Acrobat instead of in the browser with the plugin? I'm looking for a way to code this for web pages on our Intranet.
Staples is doing this with their rebate site: http://staples.rebatestatu
Thanks.
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
This has to be client configuration thing. After all you wouldn't want a website to have the power to start applications outside of the browser at least not without some user consent.
Usually if an app hasn't configured something on a PC in conjunction with IE to enable the contents of the files assoctiated with it to be displayed in the browser then you get the Open/Save dialog to which the user can consent to always open in the future.
For this to work for PDFs whatever is configured in IE for a PDF to be displayed in IE needs to be disabled. I guess the same is true of other browsers (although I bet those make it more obvious what is needed).
If you don't get a response from someone with the knowledge here you might try the Browser Issue forum instead.
Anthony.
The answer is that you will have to write a dynamic streaming routine that manipulates the contenttype headers:
<%
vBinaryPDF = loadFile ("this.asp")
Response.AddHeader "Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=PressRelease.pdf"
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf"
Response.WriteBinary vBinaryPDF
%>
If you need more help in writing an ASP based file streamer you should open a new question (i.e. how to implement loadFile function)
Tiran
Tiran,
I tried that. Seems to work first time (although the checkbox in the IE open or save dialog is greyed). I can click open and it starts in a standalone Acrobat. However subsequent attempts to navigate to the same url (this putting the address directly in the address bar) the PDF loads in the browser. It would seem that if the document is in the cache the original content-disposition is ignored.
Perhaps this won't happen from a link (but I doubt it). I guess we could add something unique to the URL each time but that means the PDF is downloaded everytime that may or may not be a problem.
Anthony.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: anthonywjones66Posted on 2005-04-01 at 06:17:31ID: 13680986
Doesn't open the standalone reader on my Machine. It does open a new window but that's easiy done with target="_blank" on the anchor.
Anthony.