Downloading Rather Than Opening Files

I'm a fairly recent switcher to Macs and have a question about opening files from the Internet. I've tried several browsers and in most instances I have to download a file to my computer and then open it, rather than it simply being opened in a media player or reader. This requires a number of extra steps and is very frustrating, as I'm used to simply clicking a link and an MP3 playing or a PDF opening. This happens when I click links to files from professional sites as well as friends sites, e.g., a guitar lesson site's PDFs.

Is this a Mac thing? Is there some global setting I can change to trust files and not have to save a copy on my computer of every file I want to open?

TIA,
Mark

MP3s and PDFs should be opening automatically in-browser, at least they do on my machine on Safari.

Have you messed with, disabled or otherwise installed any Adobe PDF products that would override the built-in PDF reader in Safari?

There is a "open trusted files automatically" setting in Safari, check to see if its on. Be aware that doing so does open you up to SOME small risk of malware if you're fooled by a Trojan download.

Thanks for your answer. I haven't disabled anything in Safari. I see the option to Open safe files after downloading, but i'd prefer not to wait to download. Safari seems to be a bit more automated than Chrome, I guess it's better than nothing, although I'll have to rebuild all my bookmarks or figure out where Chrome stores them.

This is browser dependent. Safari and Chrome both have built in PDF support (Firefox and Opera can have it with various plugins or extensions). Each browser however should handle mp3s with ease since they all make use of the mp3 support of the OS.

Do you have an example of an mp3 or PDF that is causing problems?

vansmith said:

This is browser dependent. Safari and Chrome both have built in PDF support (Firefox and Opera can have it with various plugins or extensions). Each browser however should handle mp3s with ease since they all make use of the mp3 support of the OS.

Do you have an example of an mp3 or PDF that is causing problems?

Click to expand...

On this page, if you click "Click here to read official rules," the file downloads to my downloads folder. PG PERKS: ORANGE AMPS PPC212OB CAB

Here's a friend's site, if you click an MP3, it downloads the file to your computer.

Rich McCoy - Website

With Internet Explorer on a PC, the file would simply play. All these files are junking up my computer as well as slowing things down.

For Rich's site, the file links actually say "listen or download" and they just download directly. I suspect (but can't tell from the way the site is set up) that he isn't using the right tags there.

I'm sure there's a terminal command that can force Safari to read PDFs inline but I don't know what it is.

Thanks for the input. I guess I'm still going to have to save a lot of files to Downloads and go through and clean them out from time to time, but Safari is at least more automated about it than Chrome. So the best solution is to switch to Safari, see if I can xfer my bookmarks to it.

The "official rules" page isn't linking to the PDF directly which would explain why Safari doesn't understand that it's a PDF. That's a page specific thing. The same thing is happening on Rich's site - the link doesn't point at the mp3 file directly.

vansmith said:

The "official rules" page isn't linking to the PDF directly which would explain why Safari doesn't understand that it's a PDF. That's a page specific thing. The same thing is happening on Rich's site - the link doesn't point at the mp3 file directly.

Click to expand...

I'm suspecting these are optimized/specialized for the PC environment. Rich is a Windows IT guy and stipulates on his site that it's best viewed on IE.

I guess I'll still have to clean up Downloads, but I've switched to Safari and imported bookmarks from Chrome, so this will make the situation liveable with.

Thanks all!