People, if you’re going to provide a link as hypertext (like this) so that we can’t see the file extension on the page, and you are linking to a PDF, please mention that it’s a PDF you’re linking to. Acrobat Reader crashes my browser about half the time I try to load a PDF, so I usually only try to load one if it’s something I really need to see. If I’m just idly clicking through links in a thread, I will avoid the ones that go to PDFs if I know about them first.
I know, I can mouseover the link to see where it goes before I load it, but sometimes I click before I think to do that, and then it’s a freaking PDF loading, and it’s another ten minutes of ctrl-alt-deleting all instances of my browser and Reader and restarting the browser (and sometimes the entire computer) and then reloading the site, before I can get back to the thread. Which is annoying. So please warn us if you’re linking to a PDF, hey?
I’ve got the full-blown Adobe Acrobat; not the reader. When I click on a PDF, Acrobat loads up, taking much longer than Acrobat Reader, even with a very fast computer. When I click on the document to exit, my browser (Firefox 1.0.3) freezes for about a couple of minutes. It’s not just my computer at home (Windows XP); the same thing happens with my work computer (Windows 2000).
I edited the settings in my browser so PDFs download instead of display inline. Still, though, Acrobat doesn’t always want to respect those settings.
It should also be noted that the “render as HTML” option involves a round trip to Adobe to use their online converter, and may take a long time. The results, like the “View as HTML” choice in google, are less than pretty also.
Agreed with the OP, plus a tip for people having a problem with Firefox crashing on exiting a PDF: kill the Acrobat process in Task Manager, and Firefox recovers straight away.
For people who have problems with PDF’s, I recommend disabling the Adobe Reader browser plugin. With the plugin disabled, clicking on a PDF link will download the entire file and then open it in a separate window. Thus your browser doesn’t freeze, and you can cancel the download if you don’t want to open Adobe.
You can do this by opening Adobe Reader, going to Edit/Preferences, and unchecking “Display PDF in Browser”. In Firefox, go to Tools/Options/Downloads, click the Plug-Ins button, and uncheck the box by PDF.
Is the status bar in your browser visible? When the cursor is over a link, the actual URL for that link should be displayed in the status bar. If it has a .pdf extension, don’t click on the link.
Bloody lucky you were here! You see, we didn’t know this already. We’d never heard of it, in fact. That’s why the first post of this very thread doesn’t mention it, in case you were wondering.
</sarcasm>
Yep, if your link goes to anything except a webpage or a simple picture, warn. Especially if it goes to a PDF, but it goes for movie files and the like as well.
Also, please mention the size of the file if possible. I’m more than happy to drag a 400k PDF document through my dial-up modem, but unless I’m really interested, 10MB is a bit too big.
Slightly off-topic, but why has the Acrobat Reader become so bloated? It loads a million different plugins (that take for ever) before it even can begin displaying a .pdf. The older versions of Acrobat Reader were a lot faster, even on the older hardware I have at home. On the fast machine I have at work it sometimes takes almost a minute before the .pdf is finally displayed with the latest version. Who at Adobe decided to add all this unecessary crap to Acrobat Reader?
The latest version of the Adobe Acrobat reader (version 7) is a lot faster to start up, but I agree with the OP nonetheless. Actually, I think you shouldn’t provide any link without a short summary of what it’s about.
What’s wrong with putting a simple “(PDF)” after your link so that I don’t have to remember to mouseover every single freaking link I might want to follow?
I’d follow this post with three or four rolleyes icons if that weren’t extremely condescending and rude.
You see I think it’s reduntant and unnessary, the information is there if you choose to look for it. I don’t think I should have to provide an extra warning for the people that refuse to think for themselves and look before they click. Whatever you do, don’t click this! (small jpg)
OK. You’re entitled not to provide anyone else with a little warning when your link is to a PDF or jpg or whatever. And we’re entitled to think you’re thoughtless and/or rude.
It’s not an “extra” warning, by the way, it’s just a warning. Unless you wanted to put a little warning before and also after the link, which IMHO would be going a bit overboard. One is sufficient.
A small tip for those with both Acrobat and Acrobat Reader: Internet Explorer will preferentially load Acrobat even if the Reader is a later version (tested up to v6). To get around this, simply run Acrobat Reader before clicking on the link. Internet Explorer will than use the currently running version of Acrobat Reader.
