Downloading PDFs in Safari 2.0.1

[Moonbear]

Well, I WAS happy with my upgrade to Tiger, until I got around to doing a new lit search today and discovered I can't download articles (pdf files)! Every journal that's supposed to automatically download when I click the link the article just opens the pdf in Safari. So, I've been looking around Apple's support site, and sending them nasty bug reports (I don't care if they did it on purpose, it's pure pestilence as far as I'm concerned), and I don't think they left any way for me to tell Safari to NOT do this. The best I've managed to do is click on the link to a pdf, let it open in Safari, then open the contextual menu (right click or cmd click...whichever way you prefer), select "Open in Acrobat Reader" and then wait for it to open in Reader and then do "Save as copy" (I only have Reader at the moment, I'm waiting for the full version of Acrobat to arrive...apparently I never had it on my laptop, only my old office computer; I needed the full version so infrequently, I never noticed it wasn't ever installed ...anyway, that's neither here nor there).

So, as you can imagine, this is NOT an efficient way of downloading articles I want to save on my computer.

Sooo...is there a way to disable, kill, maim, or otherwise destroy this feature without destroying Safari? Alternatively, if I delete/uninstall the new version, will the older version still work with Tiger? There are nifty new features other than this idea that could have only come from a Microsoft spy posing as an Apple programmer so it would be such a shame to have to revert to the older version...but, this is one of those things that is incredibly important in my day-to-day work, and that I can't be spending a lot of time wasting when it used to work perfectly fine before someone started tinkering. If I have to ditch Safari, I would just die if I had to go back to using IE...so, is the Mac version of Firefox (or anything else that would suit this purpose) compatible with OS 10.4 now?

 

[Moonbear]

Okay, I guess this one stumped everyone. I found a solution...I downloaded Opera. It's a bit rough...when I scroll up and down, it "blinks" at the top or bottom (depending which way I'm going) as if there's a delay in displaying the screen, so I don't think it's going to turn into my primary browser, but at least when I'm doing lit searches I can use it...and I'll hope Apple listens to my complaints.

 

[faust9]

Okay, I guess this one stumped everyone. I found a solution...I downloaded Opera. It's a bit rough...when I scroll up and down, it "blinks" at the top or bottom (depending which way I'm going) as if there's a delay in displaying the screen, so I don't think it's going to turn into my primary browser, but at least when I'm doing lit searches I can use it...and I'll hope Apple listens to my complaints.

Try Camino.

 

[ComputerGeek]

Well, I WAS happy with my upgrade to Tiger, until I got around to doing a new lit search today and discovered I can't download articles (pdf files)! Every journal that's supposed to automatically download when I click the link the article just opens the pdf in Safari. So, I've been looking around Apple's support site, and sending them nasty bug reports (I don't care if they did it on purpose, it's pure pestilence as far as I'm concerned), and I don't think they left any way for me to tell Safari to NOT do this. The best I've managed to do is click on the link to a pdf, let it open in Safari, then open the contextual menu (right click or cmd click...whichever way you prefer), select "Open in Acrobat Reader" and then wait for it to open in Reader and then do "Save as copy" (I only have Reader at the moment, I'm waiting for the full version of Acrobat to arrive...apparently I never had it on my laptop, only my old office computer; I needed the full version so infrequently, I never noticed it wasn't ever installed ...anyway, that's neither here nor there).

So, as you can imagine, this is NOT an efficient way of downloading articles I want to save on my computer.

Sooo...is there a way to disable, kill, maim, or otherwise destroy this feature without destroying Safari? Alternatively, if I delete/uninstall the new version, will the older version still work with Tiger? There are nifty new features other than this idea that could have only come from a Microsoft spy posing as an Apple programmer so it would be such a shame to have to revert to the older version...but, this is one of those things that is incredibly important in my day-to-day work, and that I can't be spending a lot of time wasting when it used to work perfectly fine before someone started tinkering. If I have to ditch Safari, I would just die if I had to go back to using IE...so, is the Mac version of Firefox (or anything else that would suit this purpose) compatible with OS 10.4 now?

click on "file", click on "save as", save it.

 

[rho]

Type this into terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES

 

[loseyourname]

Just right-click on the pdf, Moonbear. To right click on a Mac, you have to hold down the 'ctrl' key and the mouse button at the same time. After right-clicking, select "Download Linked File."

Opera is nice, but it hasn't handled certain sites (especially PF) very well for me. Safari doesn't seem to handle all of my Fantasy Sports functions, so I use both browsers depending on what I'm doing.

Also, why do you need Acrobat? You can export PDFs from iWorks and view them using Preview.

 

[Moonbear]

Just right-click on the pdf, Moonbear. To right click on a Mac, you have to hold down the 'ctrl' key and the mouse button at the same time. After right-clicking, select "Download Linked File."

But that's what I don't want to do. I used to be able to just click the link to the PDF files and they'd automatically download to my desktop while I went to get the next one. What a waste of time to have to go through extra menus to do that. When I do lit searches, I start out from the search results in pubmed, run down the list and click the titles open into new tabs to view the abstracts, and when I find an abstract that sounds like I want the article, I click the link to the article. Many journal sites will automatically download the article, so it can do that in the background while I'm reading the next abstract. The last thing I want is a bunch of extra browser windows opening up with PDFs in them that I then have to run through and use menus to download to my desktop.

Hmm...is that something I can get automator to do? Maybe I should give that a try.

Also, why do you need Acrobat? You can export PDFs from iWorks and view them using Preview.

Why would I want to do yet another step of opening in some other software to get it to Preview? Acrobat shows up in my contextual menu because it's what I have set as my default PDF viewer. I can't stand the way PDFs look in preview. Actually, I can't stand the way much of anything looks in preview. I need Acrobat anyway for more than just viewing PDFs. If I only needed to view, I have the free Reader.

 

[loseyourname]

But that's what I don't want to do. I used to be able to just click the link to the PDF files and they'd automatically download to my desktop while I went to get the next one. What a waste of time to have to go through extra menus to do that.

You must really be in a hurry. It takes all of two seconds to right-click on something. You just said you didn't want to open in Reader and then have to save properly. This will save the file directly to your hard drive without opening it. You might want to try using https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=636&application=firefox for Firefox, in conjunction with a download manager of some sort (take your pick) if you want to download large numbers of files at once.

 

[loseyourname]

Why would I want to do yet another step of opening in some other software to get it to Preview?

Export means that you create the file in iWorks, then turn it into a PDF file for export. I'm assuming that the other usage you have for Acrobat, aside from viewing PDFs, is creating them.

 

[rho]

But that's what I don't want to do. I used to be able to just click the link to the PDF files and they'd automatically download to my desktop while I went to get the next one. What a waste of time to have to go through extra menus to do that. When I do lit searches, I start out from the search results in pubmed, run down the list and click the titles open into new tabs to view the abstracts, and when I find an abstract that sounds like I want the article, I click the link to the article. Many journal sites will automatically download the article, so it can do that in the background while I'm reading the next abstract. The last thing I want is a bunch of extra browser windows opening up with PDFs in them that I then have to run through and use menus to download to my desktop.
Hmm...is that something I can get automator to do? Maybe I should give that a try.
Why would I want to do yet another step of opening in some other software to get it to Preview? Acrobat shows up in my contextual menu because it's what I have set as my default PDF viewer. I can't stand the way PDFs look in preview. Actually, I can't stand the way much of anything looks in preview. I need Acrobat anyway for more than just viewing PDFs. If I only needed to view, I have the free Reader.

I posted above how to get rid of that feature that makes .pdf's open in safari.

 

[Moonbear]

I posted above how to get rid of that feature that makes .pdf's open in safari.

Oh, just a few replies above...I see it now. Thanks. Um, just type that in terminal? Then what? I've never ventured into terminal before. I'll give it a try and hopefully I don't break my computer!

Export means that you create the file in iWorks, then turn it into a PDF file for export. I'm assuming that the other usage you have for Acrobat, aside from viewing PDFs, is creating them.

No, not just that. I need to fill out forms and save them, once in a blue moon I need to create a form, I also need to be able to merge pages from multiple PDFs into a single document (text from multiple files in Word, and figures from Photoshop, Illustrator and Powerpoint). But, my choice of using Acrobat vs Preview is neither here nor there. I know why I'm using Acrobat, and it's not related to the issue I'm complaining about.

You must really be in a hurry. It takes all of two seconds to right-click on something. You just said you didn't want to open in Reader and then have to save properly. This will save the file directly to your hard drive without opening it.

Um, no, it's not doing that for me. Okay, again, here's what happens...I go to PubMed, I do my search, I come up with a list of titles relevant to the search, I now scan that list of titles and cmd-click the titles to open the linked abstracts in new tabs (so I don't have to go back and forth). Now, I click through each tab, reading abstracts. When I see one I like, I click the button at the top that takes me to the publisher's website (or our library's eJournal holdings). On the publisher's website, there's a place to click for a PDF of the full text. So, I click on that link to the PDF. That now opens another new page where most publisher's sites are set to automatically download the PDF. So, I never need to look at that next window, I just return to the next abstract in my list while the publisher's page opens and downloads the PDF to the desktop. When I'm done gathering up all my references to the desktop, I close the browser and get it out of the way, drag all the PDFs at once to a folder relevant to whatever I'm working on, and there they are for me to read at my leisure, even when I'm not connected to the internet.

What happens with the new version is I get all the way to the publisher's website, and when I click for a PDF, instead of opening the publisher's site and downloading the PDF automatically, it opens up the PDF in another window and doesn't download anything. So now I need to go to yet another window, cmd-click (or right-click...depending if I have a mouse connected to the laptop or not), click on the menu that doesn't give me a choice to just download the PDF to the desktop, it only gives me the choice to open it in Acrobat...along with a bunch of other choices that don't do anything useful...saving the link for example. Even when it opens in Acrobat Reader (I'm still waiting on Acrobat), it is still NOT saved anywhere. If I just closed Acrobat, I'd lose it. So, now I have to not only go to an extra window and right click, but now have to switch to another application (if I had preview as my default viewer, it would probably do the same thing), and from the Acrobat menu, choose "save as a copy", the save menu pops up, and then I have to click okay. This is not just one extra click.

And, quite frankly, yes, I am in a hurry. Even one extra page to have to go to is enough to slow me down more than I want to be slowed down. Doing lit searches is tedious and boring enough, and I only want to do it once for a particular topic. When you're downloading 20 to 50 articles in an evening, and that's after reading through 500 abstracts, yes, you don't want to spend any more time on the task than absolutely needed.

I installed Opera the other night, and last night spent time learning to use it and setting it up. It does exactly what I need it to do. Oh, I figured out the "rough" part of it. There's an option to check for "smooth scrolling" that was unchecked. I don't fully understand why anyone would want rough scrolling, but since I could solve that problem, I'm happy. I have it set now so it almost has the same look, feel and behavior as Safari, except it automatically downloads my PDFs. So far, I like it because it retains the "old" that I like along with has the "new" that I like. I been hunting through the Opera discussions and found ways to customize everything I wanted customized (including a nifty trick to get the address bar over the tabs instead of under them...that was the one "default" setting I did not like...I just tricked another toolbar into thinking it's the address bar and hid the address bar ).

I'm still using Safari at the moment, but tonight I'll spend a little more time on Opera seeing how it behaves in my usual haunts. It doesn't really bother me if I have to keep two browsers open anyway; using Opera for work and Safari for play is a good system too. I'll see if I can get rho's tip to work for turning off that feature so this isn't necessary, otherwise, it seems using Opera for my lit searching is a comfortable solution for me.

 

[Moonbear]

Type this into terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES

I haven't done it yet...I want to be totally sure I'm going to do this right. I opened Terminal, and I have a prompt (my computer name followed by a $ and a cursor)...that's what I should see, right?

Now, once I type that line in (you have all the correct spacing in the above line, right?), do I just hit enter and something happens, or do I need to Save? And if I need to save it, where does it need to be saved?

And, one last set of questions...for now... If there's a Safari update again in the near future (as there often are), will this change be undone by that? Will I need to do this every time there's an update? Would it give me any problems with updating? I get really nervous about changing things like this (I guess I'm not a complete geek yet), so please excuse the million questions.

 

[rho]

Yes, just quit safari> then open terminal> paste that line in after the $> and press enter> then quit terminal (you don't need to save anything)> then open up safari again and it should handle pfd's like in panther.

If you want to change it back just change the YES to NO and repeat above.

 

[Moonbear]

Yes, just quit safari> then open terminal> paste that line in after the $> and press enter> then quit terminal (you don't need to save anything)> then open up safari again and it should handle pfd's like in panther.

If you want to change it back just change the YES to NO and repeat above.

Thanks! I'll give it a try...it can't make it any worse than it already is.

Edit: I just tried it, and it worked perfectly! I could kiss you for that! Thanks so much. :!)

 

[rho]

No problem