Firefox 78 Nightly build fixes a problem that has been there for 9 years.
In the cloud-connected world, we hardly save files on our computer. Mozilla Firefox is, however, forcing users to save PDF files in order to view them. This is an issue that has been there for a while now and it needs an immediate fix. The company, has thankfully, heard the community and fixed the problem with their latest Firefox 78 update.
According to a report by The Windows Club, Firefox will now prevent websites from forcing users to directly save PDFs. This will allow the users to just simply open them in the web browser window. Mozilla will be making the feature available to the masses with the stable release of Firefox 78. Until the update is rolled out to the masses, the company has added the feature to Firefox 78 in the Nightly channel.
Surprisingly, the issue was first raised in the community back in 2011. Now, after 9 years, the company has finally fixed the issue.
Why do websites force saving of PDFs?
In order to understand the answer to this question, you will first need to understand the code that runs behind these websites. Most of these sites sport the HTTP header - Content - Disposition: attachment; filename=”name.pdf”
This code indicates the web browser to save the PDF file with the specified name instead of opening it in the web browser window itself. Just like other web browsers, Firefox also comes with a built-in PDF viewer, which means users should be given choice whether they would like to view or save PDF documents.
With the latest nightly build of Firefox 78, Mozilla has introduced the following features and bug fixes:
- Reader View gets a redesign to match the rest of the Photon user interface.
- Firefox window position is now configurable using the command line interface.
- Gecko adds support for pushing and splitting flex items for single-line flex containers.
- The Mozilla JavaScript engine Spidermonkey got a new regular expression engine which is enabled in Nightly only for testing. The new engine delivers support for RegExp Lookbehind.
- Firefox DevTools now tells users which extension blocked a resource.
