Links in Documents vs. Email; fix needed to solve problem opening links to PDF files

I have a Zimbra Document page that contains links to a lot of PDF files.

My problem is this -- if the user has Adobe Reader browser plugin installed (for FF or IE) , the links do nothing when clicked.

If the user doesn't have the browser plugin enabled, then the browser will prompt them to save or open the file, but this is not the default setup.

However, they can right-click save as on the link, but this is not a perfect solution.

In short, this is making Zimbra Documents not a viable solution for distributing PDF files.

For testing, I sent an email with a link to a PDF and it opens it just fine. So this problem only occurs with a Zimbra document, and links to PDF files in an email message work just fine.

I tried changing the link to have a different target (like target="_blank"), but it turns out that Zimbra already adds target="_blank" to all links in Document page, and I can't find a way to alter this, but I'm not 100% sure if this is even the root of the problem.

Again, links to PDF files in an email message open as expected. I looked at the HTML source for the email message, and it appears that the links do include a target="_blank" attribute (just like with Documents).

I'm assuming the problem has something to do with how a Zimbra Document page is served within the Zimbra Web Client.

Could someone assist me in "hacking" Documents to fix this problem?

Update: I found a server level fix for the problem, but I don't know how to implement it with Zimbra. See posts below.

I found a solution, but I'm not sure how to implement it.

In order to prevent Adobe Acrobat Reader from opening your file directly in the browser window, add the following HTTP header to the response:

Code:

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Content-disposition: Attachment

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Source: Offerring PDFs that download - Stüvel.eu

Can anyone offer any insight on how to do this?

Thanks,
Bryant

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bsaxon

I have a Zimbra Document page that contains links to a lot of PDF files.

My problem is this -- if the user has Adobe Reader browser plugin installed (for FF or IE) , the links do nothing when clicked.

If the user doesn't have the browser plugin enabled, then the browser will prompt them to save or open the file, but when Adobe Reader is installed, it installs the browser plugin by default. And if a user clicks a link, they expect it do something.

However, they can right-click save as on the link either way, but this is not a perfect solution.

In short, this is making Zimbra Documents not a viable solution for distributing PDF files.

For testing, I sent an email with a link to a PDF and it opens it just fine. So this problem only occurs with a Zimbra document, and links to PDF files in an email message work just fine.

I tried changing the link to have a different target (like target="_blank"), but it turns out that Zimbra already adds target="_blank" to all links in Document page, and I can't find a way to alter this, but I'm not 100% sure if this is even the root of the problem.

Like I said, links to PDF files in an email message open as expected. I looked at the HTML source for the email message, and it appears that the links do include a target="_blank" attribute (just like with Documents).

I'm assuming the problem has something to do with how a Zimbra Document page is served within the Zimbra Web Client.

Could someone assist me in "hacking" Documents to fix this problem?

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This is really not a zimbra problem so much as it's a browser problem, I'd suspect. Does the pdf plugin work for other pdf files and just not zcs? I'd suggest starting by having the user remove the pdf plugin from the browser and see if that resolves the issue. Has the user tried an alternate browser?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tonster

This is really not a zimbra problem so much as it's a browser problem, I'd suspect. Does the pdf plugin work for other pdf files and just not zcs? I'd suggest starting by having the user remove the pdf plugin from the browser and see if that resolves the issue. Has the user tried an alternate browser?

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Like I said, this only happens within Zimbra Documents not with links to PDFs within mail messages. This can be reproduced on any Windows machine with default install of Adobe Reader 8 or 9 with Firefox 2 or 3 and IE7 (default settings, which are to use Adobe Plugin for opening the file). For some reason zimbra documents will not let you open a PDF using the plugin (without forcing it to open in a new tab or saving the file and then opening it). You can open by using ctrl+click or middle+click ( to open in a new tab) or by using right click save target/ link as and then opening in the actual program.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bsaxon

Like I said, this only happens within Zimbra Documents not with links to PDFs within mail messages. This can be reproduced on any Windows machine with default install of Adobe Reader 8 or 9 with Firefox 2 or 3 and IE7 (default settings, which are to use Adobe Plugin for opening the file). For some reason zimbra documents will not let you open a PDF using the plugin (without forcing it to open in a new tab or saving the file and then opening it). You can open by using ctrl+click or middle+click ( to open in a new tab) or by using right click save target/ link as and then opening in the actual program.

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Yes, another fix would be to change browser settings to not use the plugin and prompt the user on what to do (like Open With... or Save to a location or even automatically save to a location). But I need a fix at the Web Application/Server Level. I have 700 users; none are on a Windows Domain; spread across 14 states and 95 locations; so I can't do any kind of fix across all of my user computers easily liking using a logon script or group policy or anything like that. Anybody have any suggestions here?

I found a fix that can be achieved at the Web Application/Server Level (instead of changing a client setting). See above post about changing the HTTP Header sent by the server. Anyone know how this could be achieved?

Right now, I only need to apply this fix to one Zimbra Account (where the wiki page is stored, along with the attached PDFs).

I have a good mix of IE and Firefox users (maybe 50/50).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bsaxon

Right now, I only need to apply this fix to one Zimbra Account (where the wiki page is stored, along with the attached PDFs).

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Just to clarify - I want to share this one Zimbra Notebook/Document/Wiki page to all of my users in attempt to distribute a bunch of PDF files.