On error, offer to download the PDF rather than sitting there forever

[bstrie]

My company wants to standardize on Chrome and Firefox for our internal web applications, but this is a big blocker. Anytime we open any of our millions of PDFs in Firefox, it fails with "bad XRef entry" (as filed in #3248).

However, from the user's perspective, the loading bar simply sits there empty for eternity. There is no indication that an error has occurred unless you open up the Javascript console. The user has to know to download the PDF and open it manually, which isn't acceptable. Some kind of user-visible error message needs to be given instead, especially if the project leads decide to adhere strictly to the spec and close the XRef error as WONTFIX.

[yurydelendik]

@bstrie, the Firefox offers user-visible message and a prompt to download/open a PDF.

The user has to know to download the PDF and open it manually, which isn't acceptable. Some kind of user-visible error message needs to be given instead, especially if the project leads decide to adhere strictly to the spec and close the XRef error as WONTFIX.

The Firefox prompt above fits "user-visible error" and "open it manually" requirement. Please explain what do you mean?

[bstrie]

@yurydelendik Thanks for the prompt reply. I don't get that notification bar, using Firefox 23.0a2 (I just updated it today to make sure this behavior is still present). Other people in my company are using more stable versions of Firefox and they also do not receive that message. The PDF linked in #2388 exhibits similar behavior to the PDFs we have, in that it raises the same error without creating any kind of notification (there is one difference, in that the PDF in #2388 actually loads entirely before the console registers an error; our PDFs never load at all).

[yurydelendik]

I'm getting notification on FF 21 and 24 for Mac and Window. The notification shall appear every time console registers an error.

Please provide info about operation system and pdf.js version (it shall be printed in the console). Also, check if company administrators disable the notification bar.

[bstrie]

Just tried this at home, on Windows 7 with Firefox 23. The link in #2388 refuses to load PDF.JS (which is good), instead bringing up the usual Save/Open menu. However, using the Open in Browser add-on, I can force Firefox to handle the document according to its mime type. When I do that, it opens in PDF.JS with the exact same behavior as my work computer... bad xref entry error, no warning bar.

[yurydelendik]

Just tried this at home, on Windows 7 with Firefox 23.

Does the issue exist on 21 or 24?

However, using the Open in Browser add-on, I can force Firefox to handle ...

Not sure what do you mean here. Did you try opening via File -> Open... or drag'n'drop?

Could you provide a screenshot with address bar visible?

[yurydelendik]

No response