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built in pdf viewer lost download button

  • 9 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Tonnes

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I had to create a new user account in Win 10 (due to Win 10 update problems) and in re-establishing up my Firefox browser settings under the new Windows user account, I have lost the download button in the built-in pdf viewer.

To be clear, the 'show download' button is fine (I disabled the 'show download' button auto-hide). What I'm missing is the button to force download of the pdf showing in the built-in viewer - the one that opens the download dialog shown in the screenshot.

I would rather not do this through the application settings in the options.

Just want the button back.

Thanks.

I had to create a new user account in Win 10 (due to Win 10 update problems) and in re-establishing up my Firefox browser settings under the new Windows user account, I have lost the download button in the built-in pdf viewer. To be clear, the 'show download' button is fine (I disabled the 'show download' button auto-hide). What I'm missing is the button to force download of the pdf showing in the built-in viewer - the one that opens the download dialog shown in the screenshot. I would rather not do this through the application settings in the options. Just want the button back. Thanks.

All Replies (9)

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This is the dialog box I'm trying to get to. Simple I hope?

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What you are showing is the open with and you have Foxit Reader Shown. Foxit Reader is not a part of Firefox and you would need to see their support site : https://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf-reader/ and or contact them.

If you choose Firefox to Open it you can use the Print Icon and Print to file option to save it.

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

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Hi jsenfi, could you double-check whether the download arrow on the built-in PDF viewer toolbar is on the "overflow" list? Normally that wouldn't happen until the window becomes quite narrow, but it's worth a look. Click the button with the icon similar to >> and see whether can you find it there.

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Hi Pkshadow - yes thank you and I am aware what the dialog box contains. What I asked however, was to do with no longer being able to get the dialog box to display. This isn't a Foxit reader question. It is a Firefox question. Loss of the download button in the Firefox built-in viewer. As said in my question. If you just look at the image in isolation, you won't understand the question. Thanks anyway

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Hi jscher2000 - nope it's not in the overflow button. It wouldn't be, right? As the overflow button is in the toolbar above the built-in viewer, and the download button is part of the built-in viewer. Have just disabled the built-in viewer now. Sad to see Firefox losing functionality with each update. Ugh... Thanks anyway jscher2000

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The viewer's toolbar has its own overflow button as shown in the screenshot I posted from my Firefox 59.

If you decide you want to look into it further, you could try using the Page Inspector to see what's going on with the viewer's toolbar. As shown in the attached, the download button should immediately follow the print button. If yours is faded and the HTML says hidden="true" we could try to help you discover why Firefox might be doing that.

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Note that it isn’t very useful to add a download button for pdf files loaded from a local source. Hence you should see a button when e.g. downloading a test pdf from here, and after downloading and saving it locally and loading it from disk, there should be no button.

Additionally, pdf files chosen to be viewed in Firefox instead of downloaded are considered to be local files, hence you will see no button for those either.

The/my assumption however is that users are able to locate the file themselves and hence already have access to and can copy it from that source, though there may be cases where this involves links in documents, or browsing a network is prohibited.

Auto-hiding the button for file:// URLs was probably changed by this or the related GitHub issue as of Firefox 59. If you would like to see an option to enable the button for file:// URLs, please open an issue there.

Also see this question.

/Edit Apparently the change to auto-hide the button was backed out for reasons of confusion, so the button should be visible again for local files (probably including those on network drives) as of Firefox 61. Also see this bug and the issue mentioned above.

Modified by Tonnes

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Tonnes,

This thread is not about "adding" but rather the reason for deleting, as my original post:

It is nothing to do with the overflow button.

Can someone please end this thread as none of the responses address the original issue raised.

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jsenfi said

Tonnes, This thread is not about "adding" but rather the reason for deleting, as my original post:

I’m sorry for any confusion but by "adding" in my previous comment, I merely referred to developers "adding" the button, not the user.

To the best of my knowledge, my last post explained in which cases the download button would not be displayed (or rather, hidden automatically), which happens/changed in Firefox 59 and 60. If you update to 61, this will no longer be the case as the change was reverted, so that response should have answered your question. Please refer to the links provided if you want to read more about it.

Unless you still see the issue in Firefox 61 (do you?), you are welcome to mark the previous reply as solution.