Server Downtime - May 13th-16th, 2025

[cahwyguy]

FYI, I'm noticing that this Quick Reply box has loads of broken graphics.

[Max Rockatansky]

The emoji icons keep going through a cycle of being fine and being broken.

[vdeane]

Not just those; I just had a page where the rank banners were broken.

[formulanone]

The emoji icons keep going through a cycle of being fine and being broken.

I kind of wish they could be hidden while I type a post, but maybe I should have asked that ten years ago.

[rickmastfan67]

For some odd reason, Alex has '403'd' the image directory for the forum.  Thus, that's why they aren't showing up.

[wanderer2575]

I've been getting a 403 Forbidden screen for the past couple days when I try to get into the Forum on my home computer, even after partly clearing the cache and forcing a page reload.  I haven't had issues on my work computer, such as now.  I'm running Firefox on Windows 7 at home; I guess the note a few posts up about the server now not liking older Windows versions affects me.  It wasn't a problem until Sunday morning.  I might try the user agent override as mentioned, but with my luck I would really foul up the machine.

Can't post photos for the XY Challenge. 

[kphoger]

If you're using Chrome, take a good long look at the life choices that led you to that unfortunate decision and reconsider.

Chrome is indeed evil

I use Chrome at work for certain things.  But that's because I keep a lot of sites open at once, and I want to be able to easily find the one I want on the taskbar.  So for certain sites I use Edge, others Chrome, others Firefox, others Opera.  I actually use Edge more than the others, not Firefox, but for no particular reason.

My biggest issue with Chrome is that I can only set the save-to destination folder for downloads, but I can't choose the option of opening instead of saving.  (Yes, I know opening requires first saving, but only into a temp folder.  Chrome doesn't appear to have that as an option at all.)

It's just recently that I started using Opera.  The biggest thing I don't like is that there's no such thing as a homepage.  I find myself hitting Alt+Home, and it just takes me to the dumb 'Speed Dial' page instead of Google (which I usually set as the homepage).

[vdeane]

My biggest issue with Chrome is that I can only set the save-to destination folder for downloads, but I can't choose the option of opening instead of saving.  (Yes, I know opening requires first saving, but only into a temp folder.  Chrome doesn't appear to have that as an option at all.)

Yes, that.  It's especially annoying when sites configure themselves to require PDFs to be downloaded instead of viewed in the browser (if I had my way, browsers wouldn't honor that).

[kphoger]

My biggest issue with Chrome is that I can only set the save-to destination folder for downloads, but I can't choose the option of opening instead of saving.  (Yes, I know opening requires first saving, but only into a temp folder.  Chrome doesn't appear to have that as an option at all.)

Yes, that.  It's especially annoying when sites configure themselves to require PDFs to be downloaded instead of viewed in the browser (if I had my way, browsers wouldn't honor that).

→ Settings
→ Privacy & security
→ Additional content settings
→ PDF documents
→ Open PDFs in Chrome

Does that not work for you?

[1995hoo]

My biggest issue with Chrome is that I can only set the save-to destination folder for downloads, but I can't choose the option of opening instead of saving.  (Yes, I know opening requires first saving, but only into a temp folder.  Chrome doesn't appear to have that as an option at all.)

Yes, that.  It's especially annoying when sites configure themselves to require PDFs to be downloaded instead of viewed in the browser (if I had my way, browsers wouldn't honor that).

I was having a problem on my work laptop (on which I use Edge because Firefox was causing problems) where .PDFs were not opening properly and were downloading as .HTML files, which rendered them useless. So I wound up configuring the browser to force the download so that I could save the .PDFs when I need to do so.

[hbelkins]

My biggest issue with Chrome is that I can only set the save-to destination folder for downloads, but I can't choose the option of opening instead of saving.  (Yes, I know opening requires first saving, but only into a temp folder.  Chrome doesn't appear to have that as an option at all.)

Yes, that.  It's especially annoying when sites configure themselves to require PDFs to be downloaded instead of viewed in the browser (if I had my way, browsers wouldn't honor that).

OTOH, I'd prefer for PDFs to be saved for me to open in an external app -- in my case, Preview for Mac -- versus opening in the browser. I prefer this because I print a lot of mailing labels for my wife that she forwards to my Gmail account, and I view my Gmail account in my browser. It's easier for me to save the PDFs, open them in Preview, and then print them as opposed to having to deal with them in the browser.

[vdeane]

My biggest issue with Chrome is that I can only set the save-to destination folder for downloads, but I can't choose the option of opening instead of saving.  (Yes, I know opening requires first saving, but only into a temp folder.  Chrome doesn't appear to have that as an option at all.)

Yes, that.  It's especially annoying when sites configure themselves to require PDFs to be downloaded instead of viewed in the browser (if I had my way, browsers wouldn't honor that).

→ Settings
→ Privacy & security
→ Additional content settings
→ PDF documents
→ Open PDFs in Chrome

Does that not work for you?

It works most of the time, but there's something websites can do to override that and require an individual PDF to be downloaded.  That's where it gets annoying.

[ClassicHasClass]

Probably when they specify a MIME type like application/octet-stream or some such. Not much the browser can do about that other than content sniff.

[formulanone]

I prefer downloading the PDF if it's over a certain threshold; usually something over 10-20 MB can crash a browser (your mileage may vary). But that's only helpful if you know how large the PDF you're encountering.

[kphoger]

I prefer downloading the PDF if it's over a certain threshold; usually something over 10-20 MB can crash a browser (your mileage may vary). But that's only helpful if you know how large the PDF you're encountering.

Whenever I post a hyperlink to a .pdf on the forum, I add a warning in parenthesis.  If it seems especially long to me, then I'll also state how many pages it is.  I figure nobody likes inadvertently downloading a 600-page .pdf to their computer.  Or their phone.