PDFs and TXT files don't open in the browser

Hi. I have recently implemented eDocman on my site and all is working fine.

However some of my users are complaining bitterly about a change in behavior to what they were used to before.

Previously, when the target file was accessed directly by its URL, for may users the PDF or the TXT file was immediately displayed in the Browser. Now they invariably are offered a download and need several more clicks before they can see a PDF.

For TXT files it is even worse because many of my non-technical users have no idea which app to choose to open them.

Personally it doesn't bother me in the slightest, i prefer the control of choosing how files are opened but this is a big deal for some of my users. I may have to go through the system and change every eDocman URL to a direct reference.

Is there any way to enable the default behavior of opening the file in the browser (if the user's settings permit it).

Hi Lawrence

Could you please check to see they clicked on Download or View button ? If they clicked on Download button, the file will be downloaded. If they click on View button, the document will be opened directly on web browser.

Could you please check and get back to me ?

Tuan

Hi Tuan,

Many thanks for you swift and helpful response, which is much appreciated.

I have the Editor plugin set to provide a direct download when inserting an eDocman link. When I flip it back to "Add link to document detail" then I get the details page with options to view or download.

What I would really like is a third option on the plugin which skips the detail page but provides a "view" link rather than a "download" link.

In the meantime however, having seen how the links from the "Download" and "View" buttons are constructed, I can manually edit the HTML to change the download-style links to view-style links.

Lawrence

The issue of not allowing a document to be downloaded is to have it protected viewed within the pages at the site, not the browser. Once the document is open in the browser it's possible to save it and that defeats the purpose of not downloading it.

I want to display documents within my site, not in another window of the browser, so that the viewer is not able to save the contents to their desktop.

Also, once the pdf document is open in another window of the browser, it becomes available for printing it, even when the pdf itself has restrictions for printing and copying content. As such, edocman defeats all protection for which one would use edocman.

Hi Michael

I just replied you via email regarding the protection of PDF content. Basically, EDocman (and all other Joomla extensions) has to rely on the PDF plugin of web browser to display the content of PDF file.

There are no way for us to control the function of the plugin of web browser (I believe most of web browser need to use Acrobat reader plugin to display PDF documents).

As far as I can see, this is the limitation of PHP, not the limitation of EDocman. So if you need to protect your PDF documents from being saving and printing, you will need to find a different solution (maybe outside Joomla/PHP). If you know a PHP plugin / coding can display PDF documents and protect them, please let me know !

Please look at your email to see my detailed response !

Tuan