Clicking pdf link opens it in application without asking to save it | Hacker News Reader

Clicking pdf link opens it in application without asking to save it

bugs.chromium.org

58 pointsbrowserguy16 comments

Not nearly as bad as last year's bug where Chrome would randomly and silently drop characters from a printed document. That lasted for almost a month [0].

[0] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=658606

Truth be told, I actually prefer PDFs opening in browser compared to downloading the file, opening the file, reading it, and then having to delete file (unless I actually want to save it.) If it's a file I want to keep, I right click and save or save the already open PDF. Most of the time I'm just looking for information in a datasheet and don't want to actually download the PDF.

Did you read the entry? It apparently downloads and opens in the native PDF reader without asking when browser pdf plugin is disabled.

With the state of PDF security this could a one-click pwn.

This bug only applies to people who have disabled Chrome's built-in PDF reader, if I'm reading it right. (And pdfium is probably the world's best in-browser PDF reader; it works reliably, it's well-sandboxed, and it's free software despite being based on the proprietary/commercial Foxit codebase.)

I don't think so. I have the Chrome PDF reader enabled on a Mac using Sierra and sometimes it just downloads the PDF and opens it in Preview.

Someone should probably say that on the bug report, then! :) Especially if it happens with Chrome stable.

If the web server throws a "Content-Disposition: attachment" header with it, you will download the file, no matter the mime type or file extension.

What's newsworthy about this? It seems like this is a bug in Chrome 56, the current beta version (not stable), in a non-default configuration (the built-in PDF plugin disabled), and the Chrome team is treating it as a bug because it's been assigned to someone to work on. What am I missing?

I assume someone didn't think their problem wasn't getting enough attention, social media to the rescue!

Maybe i'm not following but if you disable the plugin, and tell it not not automatically open the pdf it still just opens it in the native reader. Any exploits in the document will run.

Assuming i am not misunderstanding the issue that's a pretty big deal.

It does that with HTML files as well.

Well, so does Microsoft Edge (soon).

Source?

Fire up edge mobile and see for yourself. It will let you use Reader but tells you that you should use Edge and that Reader is going away soon(IIRC)

Maybe it's me, but the way the title is written ("now") makes it sound like it's made on purpose...

Thanks, we've reverted the title from the submitted “Chrome now opens pdf files without way to opt out”.

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