I don't suppose we're actually 'serving' the PDF or DOC as such, in that we only link 
to the file.  As we have no control over the header of the file, the user's OS will 
handle it however it is configured to.  Herein lies the problem...

-----Original Message-----
From: Bradley Wright [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 9:06 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] OT: Opening documents in _blank window



Miles,

Generally when serving PDF type document at my place of work, we serve 
them using a custom HTTP header:

header( "content-disposition: inline" );

(that's the PHP way to do it).

This works for us because we serve most of our documents as BLOBs from 
the database. If you're not doing that, I'm not sure my help will be 
any... help.

Be careful with this one, it seems to work pretty well in IE, but other 
browsers ignore it. Then again, other browsers generally behave better 
with attachments/mime-types in general.

Miles Tillinger wrote:

>Just a question about how other developers handle opening documents e.g. PDF, DOC, in 
>a new window.
>
>At the moment I am using _blank targets.
>
>Scenario 1: User is using IE with Word configured to open inside the IE window.  When 
>the user clicks on a link to the Word doc a new IE window opens and the doc is loaded 
>in that window.
>
>Scenario 2: User is using IE or another browser, but is configured to open Word doc's 
>in Word, not in the Browser window.  When the user clicks on a link to the Word doc a 
>new Browser window open and the user either prompted to Save or Open the doc, or may 
>even open the doc in Word automatically if the user has previously selected that 
>option.  The problem here is that the user is left with a blank Browser window.
>
>So Scenario 1 is how I'd like it to behave in every case, but is this possible?  
>Since I have no way of knowing how the user has their system configured I don't know 
>whether to offer the link with a _blank target or not?  Is there an accessible 
>standard way of doing it?
>
>Regards,
>
>Miles
>
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