PDF and IE: How about asking the user?

PDF and IE: How about asking the user?

I have said this before and I am saying it again. IE opening PDF document is irritating, why? Let's take a look:

• I don't have enough bandwidth so if it's a bigger document, it might take longer than I can tolerate
• While the PDF is downloading the screen is dead-white or at least it freezes up giving the impression that something's wrong, a less-informed user might try to close the window... but then again sometimes that too is not possible. God knows why.
• It essentially means IE takes control of MY screens without taking my permission. Not good.
• This morning I was trying to download something from Sourceforge but because it was a PDF file I just couldn't, I tried 'Right click>Save target as' but it didn't work, again, god knows why. I have observed that it doesn't work on some database driven site that have funny URL schemes. Solution? Well, I don't think Microsoft would give a damn, so the site owners should offer PDF as a zipped file. Or if you know someone influential at Microsoft; scream this idea to him/her. You got a better Idea? Holler on!

  Update: I was speaking to my good friend Madhu menon - a user-experience consultant- and I learnt that IE is not at fault in this issue. It is the Acrobat reader that enables your browser to read PDF documents online. You can disable this option. However, I still think it is a usability issue as you can't expect a 'non-technical' user to know the Acrobat Reader-IE integration stuff. I hope IE or Adobe do something about this.

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