Download.asp: My mortal enemy - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Download.asp: My mortal enemy

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
misterfido_dup
Oct 15, 2008 11:36:55 Okay, I really don't have many complaints about DDi, but I'm getting really, REALLY tired of not being able to download PDFs of the dragon/dungeon articles without esoteric techniques for manipulating Firefox/Adobe into allowing me to read this stuff.

I click on the link, and it takes forever to load up as a PDF because, let's face it, Adobe is ridiculously slow. Often, I'll get an "input error" or somesuch, but not always.

But that's okay, I don't WANT to just click on the link--I want to save the PDFs to my desktop, click on them at my leisure, put them on my flash drive to use with my laptop, and (most importantly of all) use Foxit reader, not Adobe, to read them.

And yet, what happens if I hit "Save Link As..." on the link? It saves a cute little download.asp file to my desktop! Wee! I have so many download.asps clogging my desktop and recycle bin, and absolutely swarming my laptop, that I spend more time on the Wizards.com website cleaning up after problems like this then I do actually reading the articles. But again, this isn't necessarily a consistent fact--sometimes, if I click on the article, have my Adobe flip out and give me an input error, back out, and save the article with "Save Link As..." it'll work!

God, how I love this website.

With each attempt to open a PDF so irritating, I'm becoming discouraged with going on the wizards.com website altogether. Which is a shame considering I put so much money into my subscription yesterday.

All I'm trying to say is: these PDF links are horrendous. I know you're trying to have some layer of security, or script the download link to pick the least-busy mirror to download from, or something to that effect. But it's annoying for some people like me, who hate having the file open in Firefox, hate having my PDF Download addon nullified by your strange scripting techniques (come on, I installed PDF Download _JUST_ so I could browse your site care-free! I don't click on PDF links otherwise!), and hate needing to jump through hoops JUST to view an article I paid for.

There are better techniques out there... I've seen them, I've sometimes worked to create them... I have faith in you, Wizards of the Coast, that you can one day remove my need to struggle with your site just to open one of the oldest, most popular, and best supported document formats on the 'net!
#2
Sorenson
Oct 15, 2008 11:48:56 Just posting to voice my agreement. It's bad enough having to "download" the PDF once by viewing it only to turn around and have to save the page to a file and thus download it again. It's really bad with the compiled versions.
#3
tookyg_dup
Oct 15, 2008 12:07:28 I agree, the download.asp/download.htm thing is highly annoying and while I can't help you with the right click, "save as..." problem I can show you how to force Firefox to open PDFs in Adobe Reader or whatever program you want, apparently, Foxit.

In Firefox 3, click Tools, Options..., go to the Applications tab and find the correct content type (listed as Adobe Acrobat Document, PDF or something similar to that). On the right you can select which program you wish to use to open PDFs.

This won't allow you to save the PDF when right clicking the link but it will open up in whichever reader you prefer rather than inside Firefox.
#4
solice
Oct 15, 2008 13:20:19 I have passed this along to the tech team!
#5
theblackwing
Oct 15, 2008 14:00:03
And yet, what happens if I hit "Save Link As..." on the link? It saves a cute little download.asp file to my desktop! Wee! I have so many download.asps clogging my desktop and recycle bin, and absolutely swarming my laptop, that I spend more time on the Wizards.com website cleaning up after problems like this then I do actually reading the articles. But again, this isn't necessarily a consistent fact--sometimes, if I click on the article, have my Adobe flip out and give me an input error, back out, and save the article with "Save Link As..." it'll work!

I too have learned that when I right click and choose "save link as", it always wants to save it as download.asp ... the first time. I then click cancel, right click the link again, choose "save link as" (again) and it has miraculously become the correct pdf file to save. Why it chooses to save the pdf file the second time around and not the first is beyond me. I don't know if this helps you and I know it doesn't solve the real problem, but there ya go.
#6
ah_graht_dup
Oct 15, 2008 15:48:52 I'm also use Firefox and Adobe Reader and have never had a problem downloading PDFs from any Wizards.com page. Do you have the most recent versions of Firefox (3.0.3) and Reader (9) installed?
#7
misterfido_dup
Oct 18, 2008 3:13:18
I'm also use Firefox and Adobe Reader and have never had a problem downloading PDFs from any Wizards.com page. Do you have the most recent versions of Firefox (3.0.3) and Reader (9) installed?

The problem lies not in acquiring the PDFs WITH Reader but acquiring them WITHOUT it, since I hate the long load times, and often simply want to save/archive my PDFs. Also, I simply don't want to use Adobe Reader at all. Like, zero. I use Foxit Reader, which is in my opinion 100% better in all respects =P

It might be because I have Adobe Acrobat installed on my computer. Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader tend to tread on each other's toes--violently. Which wouldn't really be a good excuse for Wizards anyway, since Acrobat is a (relatively) common product for some people, depending.

In Firefox 3, click Tools, Options..., go to the Applications tab and find the correct content type (listed as Adobe Acrobat Document, PDF or something similar to that). On the right you can select which program you wish to use to open PDFs.

All well and good, and I thank you for the advice, but there are two big problems with this: Using that technique circumvents my download manager and uses Firefox's own download utility. The second problem is that PDF technology has been on the web for years; I shouldn't have to reconfigure my browser at ALL to use it, especially when I've already reconfigured it with add-ons for PDF management, a download manager which can sort PDFs, and a non-Adobe product for reading =P
#8
tookyg_dup
Oct 19, 2008 14:09:59
All well and good, and I thank you for the advice, but there are two big problems with this: Using that technique circumvents my download manager and uses Firefox's own download utility. The second problem is that PDF technology has been on the web for years; I shouldn't have to reconfigure my browser at ALL to use it, especially when I've already reconfigured it with add-ons for PDF management, a download manager which can sort PDFs, and a non-Adobe product for reading =P

Agreed, there shouldn't be any need for reconfiguration. Hopefully the issue is resolved quickly.
#9
Artifact
Oct 20, 2008 5:05:24 Here's the problem I'm having and the work-around I've developed. I'm using Interent Explorer 6. I'll try to explain as best I can:

Right click on "See it now" link. Then, click on "Save Target As", either right or left click, until there's an option to save the file as "text" (not "html"). Note, if I left click on the "See it now" link to open it without saving, it redirects and opens as a webpage, translated as gibberish.

Once saved, it opens as a PDF (if not, see below). Sometimes I need to right click on "Save Target As" to bring up the option to save as text, sometimes it's a left click that does the trick (seems random); I want to save with a "text" file extension, not "html" (it doesn't work).

If for some reason it doesn't open as a PDF (just as often, it opens as a webpage, translated as gibberish), then open Acrobat Reader. Click on the "Open" folder icon. Make sure "all files" (not just "Adobe PDF files") can be viewed. Then, double click on the saved file (it has a WordPad icon), opening it from within the Reader, then save as a proper PDF file. Lastly, erase the now worthless text file.

I've made these notes to myself so I can remeber how this crazy work-around is s'posed to work. I'm not able to directly download and save the file without the work-around. I'm at a complete loss here. Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated ;).
#10
mudbunny
Oct 20, 2008 13:25:14 I have poked Solice and asked her to get some of the tech staff at WotC to look into this problem.
#11
solice
Oct 20, 2008 13:56:38 I have checked in with the dev guys and this is a known issue.
We are working on the fix for this but do not have a specific eta at this time.

Sorry for the inconvience!
#12
nom
Oct 21, 2008 1:04:43 One option is to turn OFF the helper for PDFs. If there's no PDF helper app, then it should prompt to save it to a file when you click it.

On Safari, or other apps that can display a PDF directly in the window, you can choose 'save page' (or equivalent) from the file menu once you've loaded the PDF. Again, make sure that you have a lightweight viewer (like Preview) set as your in-line viewer, rather than Acrobat Reader.
#13
ORC_Chaos
Oct 22, 2008 0:25:05 Randy Buehler addressed this issue in today's Digital Insider #12 which you can see here.
#14
Snooze
Oct 22, 2008 10:33:33
I too have learned that when I right click and choose "save link as", it always wants to save it as download.asp ... the first time. I then click cancel, right click the link again, choose "save link as" (again) and it has miraculously become the correct pdf file to save. Why it chooses to save the pdf file the second time around and not the first is beyond me. I don't know if this helps you and I know it doesn't solve the real problem, but there ya go.

This is exactly what I do (using Firefox), and since I discovered this trick, it's worked every time. So:

1. Log in to the site
2. Right-click the "save as" link and get the dialog box that asks you to save "download.asp"
3. Close this dialog box
4. Right-click the "save as" link again and get the dialog box again, but this time it says "name_of_file.pdf"
5. Choose a location and save it

Not ideal, but it's pretty easy and it works for me every time.
#15
CHeard
Nov 03, 2008 21:58:17
This is exactly what I do (using Firefox), and since I discovered this trick, it's worked every time. So:

1. Log in to the site
2. Right-click the "save as" link and get the dialog box that asks you to save "download.asp"
3. Close this dialog box
4. Right-click the "save as" link again and get the dialog box again, but this time it says "name_of_file.pdf"
5. Choose a location and save it

Not ideal, but it's pretty easy and it works for me every time.

Doesn't work for me in Safari on Mac OS X.

In fact, nothing works for me in Safari or Firefox on Mac OS X. I can't view the subscriber PDFs at all. The download.asp pages get stuck in an endless loop of reloading themselves and never display the PDF ... which of course means that I can't save the PDF to disk for easy access later.

And when I sent this information to Customer Service, I got the inane reply, "It might be easier for you to save the PDFs to your hard drive."

Grrr.
#16
mycroftb
Nov 03, 2008 23:27:34
One option is to turn OFF the helper for PDFs. If there's no PDF helper app, then it should prompt to save it to a file when you click it.

On Safari, or other apps that can display a PDF directly in the window, you can choose 'save page' (or equivalent) from the file menu once you've loaded the PDF. Again, make sure that you have a lightweight viewer (like Preview) set as your in-line viewer, rather than Acrobat Reader.

This is what I prefer. I've had problems with Acrobat Reader eating up a lot of cpu and memory and not exiting cleanly when I use it in a browser, not to mention it locks out all my other tabs while it loads its plugin.

In Firefox 3, click Tools, Add-ons, then click Plugins. Click Acrobat Reader, and click Disable. It won't affect your ability to use Acrobat Reader outside the browser. From here, any time I click on a link to a PDF, it'll prompt me to save it. Which is what I want. I'll save it somewhere, then open it up outside of my browser.
#17
tomlib
Nov 09, 2008 16:01:07 I'm not a subscriber and I have no substantive comments to add to the discussion.

However, thank you Misterfido! I've been looking for anything to use instead of horrible Adobe Reader and after five minutes with Foxit I'm a convert!

Tom

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 misterfido_dup Oct 15, 2008 11:36:55	Okay, I really don't have many complaints about DDi, but I'm getting really, REALLY tired of not being able to download PDFs of the dragon/dungeon articles without esoteric techniques for manipulating Firefox/Adobe into allowing me to read this stuff. I click on the link, and it takes forever to load up as a PDF because, let's face it, Adobe is ridiculously slow. Often, I'll get an "input error" or somesuch, but not always. But that's okay, I don't WANT to just click on the link--I want to save the PDFs to my desktop, click on them at my leisure, put them on my flash drive to use with my laptop, and (most importantly of all) use Foxit reader, not Adobe, to read them. And yet, what happens if I hit "Save Link As..." on the link? It saves a cute little download.asp file to my desktop! Wee! I have so many download.asps clogging my desktop and recycle bin, and absolutely swarming my laptop, that I spend more time on the Wizards.com website cleaning up after problems like this then I do actually reading the articles. But again, this isn't necessarily a consistent fact--sometimes, if I click on the article, have my Adobe flip out and give me an input error, back out, and save the article with "Save Link As..." it'll work! God, how I love this website. With each attempt to open a PDF so irritating, I'm becoming discouraged with going on the wizards.com website altogether. Which is a shame considering I put so much money into my subscription yesterday. All I'm trying to say is: these PDF links are horrendous. I know you're trying to have some layer of security, or script the download link to pick the least-busy mirror to download from, or something to that effect. But it's annoying for some people like me, who hate having the file open in Firefox, hate having my PDF Download addon nullified by your strange scripting techniques (come on, I installed PDF Download _JUST_ so I could browse your site care-free! I don't click on PDF links otherwise!), and hate needing to jump through hoops JUST to view an article I paid for. There are better techniques out there... I've seen them, I've sometimes worked to create them... I have faith in you, Wizards of the Coast, that you can one day remove my need to struggle with your site just to open one of the oldest, most popular, and best supported document formats on the 'net!
#2 Sorenson Oct 15, 2008 11:48:56	Just posting to voice my agreement. It's bad enough having to "download" the PDF once by viewing it only to turn around and have to save the page to a file and thus download it again. It's really bad with the compiled versions.
#3 tookyg_dup Oct 15, 2008 12:07:28	I agree, the download.asp/download.htm thing is highly annoying and while I can't help you with the right click, "save as..." problem I can show you how to force Firefox to open PDFs in Adobe Reader or whatever program you want, apparently, Foxit. In Firefox 3, click Tools, Options..., go to the Applications tab and find the correct content type (listed as Adobe Acrobat Document, PDF or something similar to that). On the right you can select which program you wish to use to open PDFs. This won't allow you to save the PDF when right clicking the link but it will open up in whichever reader you prefer rather than inside Firefox.
#4 solice Oct 15, 2008 13:20:19	I have passed this along to the tech team!
#5 theblackwing Oct 15, 2008 14:00:03	And yet, what happens if I hit "Save Link As..." on the link? It saves a cute little download.asp file to my desktop! Wee! I have so many download.asps clogging my desktop and recycle bin, and absolutely swarming my laptop, that I spend more time on the Wizards.com website cleaning up after problems like this then I do actually reading the articles. But again, this isn't necessarily a consistent fact--sometimes, if I click on the article, have my Adobe flip out and give me an input error, back out, and save the article with "Save Link As..." it'll work! I too have learned that when I right click and choose "save link as", it always wants to save it as download.asp ... the first time. I then click cancel, right click the link again, choose "save link as" (again) and it has miraculously become the correct pdf file to save. Why it chooses to save the pdf file the second time around and not the first is beyond me. I don't know if this helps you and I know it doesn't solve the real problem, but there ya go.
#6 ah_graht_dup Oct 15, 2008 15:48:52	I'm also use Firefox and Adobe Reader and have never had a problem downloading PDFs from any Wizards.com page. Do you have the most recent versions of Firefox (3.0.3) and Reader (9) installed?
#7 misterfido_dup Oct 18, 2008 3:13:18	I'm also use Firefox and Adobe Reader and have never had a problem downloading PDFs from any Wizards.com page. Do you have the most recent versions of Firefox (3.0.3) and Reader (9) installed? The problem lies not in acquiring the PDFs WITH Reader but acquiring them WITHOUT it, since I hate the long load times, and often simply want to save/archive my PDFs. Also, I simply don't want to use Adobe Reader at all. Like, zero. I use Foxit Reader, which is in my opinion 100% better in all respects =P It might be because I have Adobe Acrobat installed on my computer. Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader tend to tread on each other's toes--violently. Which wouldn't really be a good excuse for Wizards anyway, since Acrobat is a (relatively) common product for some people, depending. In Firefox 3, click Tools, Options..., go to the Applications tab and find the correct content type (listed as Adobe Acrobat Document, PDF or something similar to that). On the right you can select which program you wish to use to open PDFs. All well and good, and I thank you for the advice, but there are two big problems with this: Using that technique circumvents my download manager and uses Firefox's own download utility. The second problem is that PDF technology has been on the web for years; I shouldn't have to reconfigure my browser at ALL to use it, especially when I've already reconfigured it with add-ons for PDF management, a download manager which can sort PDFs, and a non-Adobe product for reading =P
#8 tookyg_dup Oct 19, 2008 14:09:59	All well and good, and I thank you for the advice, but there are two big problems with this: Using that technique circumvents my download manager and uses Firefox's own download utility. The second problem is that PDF technology has been on the web for years; I shouldn't have to reconfigure my browser at ALL to use it, especially when I've already reconfigured it with add-ons for PDF management, a download manager which can sort PDFs, and a non-Adobe product for reading =P Agreed, there shouldn't be any need for reconfiguration. Hopefully the issue is resolved quickly.
#9 Artifact Oct 20, 2008 5:05:24	Here's the problem I'm having and the work-around I've developed. I'm using Interent Explorer 6. I'll try to explain as best I can: Right click on "See it now" link. Then, click on "Save Target As", either right or left click, until there's an option to save the file as "text" (not "html"). Note, if I left click on the "See it now" link to open it without saving, it redirects and opens as a webpage, translated as gibberish. Once saved, it opens as a PDF (if not, see below). Sometimes I need to right click on "Save Target As" to bring up the option to save as text, sometimes it's a left click that does the trick (seems random); I want to save with a "text" file extension, not "html" (it doesn't work). If for some reason it doesn't open as a PDF (just as often, it opens as a webpage, translated as gibberish), then open Acrobat Reader. Click on the "Open" folder icon. Make sure "all files" (not just "Adobe PDF files") can be viewed. Then, double click on the saved file (it has a WordPad icon), opening it from within the Reader, then save as a proper PDF file. Lastly, erase the now worthless text file. I've made these notes to myself so I can remeber how this crazy work-around is s'posed to work. I'm not able to directly download and save the file without the work-around. I'm at a complete loss here. Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated ;).
#10 mudbunny Oct 20, 2008 13:25:14	I have poked Solice and asked her to get some of the tech staff at WotC to look into this problem.
#11 solice Oct 20, 2008 13:56:38	I have checked in with the dev guys and this is a known issue. We are working on the fix for this but do not have a specific eta at this time. Sorry for the inconvience!
#12 nom Oct 21, 2008 1:04:43	One option is to turn OFF the helper for PDFs. If there's no PDF helper app, then it should prompt to save it to a file when you click it. On Safari, or other apps that can display a PDF directly in the window, you can choose 'save page' (or equivalent) from the file menu once you've loaded the PDF. Again, make sure that you have a lightweight viewer (like Preview) set as your in-line viewer, rather than Acrobat Reader.
#13 ORC_Chaos Oct 22, 2008 0:25:05	Randy Buehler addressed this issue in today's Digital Insider #12 which you can see here.
#14 Snooze Oct 22, 2008 10:33:33	I too have learned that when I right click and choose "save link as", it always wants to save it as download.asp ... the first time. I then click cancel, right click the link again, choose "save link as" (again) and it has miraculously become the correct pdf file to save. Why it chooses to save the pdf file the second time around and not the first is beyond me. I don't know if this helps you and I know it doesn't solve the real problem, but there ya go. This is exactly what I do (using Firefox), and since I discovered this trick, it's worked every time. So: 1. Log in to the site 2. Right-click the "save as" link and get the dialog box that asks you to save "download.asp" 3. Close this dialog box 4. Right-click the "save as" link again and get the dialog box again, but this time it says "name_of_file.pdf" 5. Choose a location and save it Not ideal, but it's pretty easy and it works for me every time.
#15 CHeard Nov 03, 2008 21:58:17	This is exactly what I do (using Firefox), and since I discovered this trick, it's worked every time. So: 1. Log in to the site 2. Right-click the "save as" link and get the dialog box that asks you to save "download.asp" 3. Close this dialog box 4. Right-click the "save as" link again and get the dialog box again, but this time it says "name_of_file.pdf" 5. Choose a location and save it Not ideal, but it's pretty easy and it works for me every time. Doesn't work for me in Safari on Mac OS X. In fact, nothing works for me in Safari or Firefox on Mac OS X. I can't view the subscriber PDFs at all. The download.asp pages get stuck in an endless loop of reloading themselves and never display the PDF ... which of course means that I can't save the PDF to disk for easy access later. And when I sent this information to Customer Service, I got the inane reply, "It might be easier for you to save the PDFs to your hard drive." Grrr.
#16 mycroftb Nov 03, 2008 23:27:34	One option is to turn OFF the helper for PDFs. If there's no PDF helper app, then it should prompt to save it to a file when you click it. On Safari, or other apps that can display a PDF directly in the window, you can choose 'save page' (or equivalent) from the file menu once you've loaded the PDF. Again, make sure that you have a lightweight viewer (like Preview) set as your in-line viewer, rather than Acrobat Reader. This is what I prefer. I've had problems with Acrobat Reader eating up a lot of cpu and memory and not exiting cleanly when I use it in a browser, not to mention it locks out all my other tabs while it loads its plugin. In Firefox 3, click Tools, Add-ons, then click Plugins. Click Acrobat Reader, and click Disable. It won't affect your ability to use Acrobat Reader outside the browser. From here, any time I click on a link to a PDF, it'll prompt me to save it. Which is what I want. I'll save it somewhere, then open it up outside of my browser.
#17 tomlib Nov 09, 2008 16:01:07	I'm not a subscriber and I have no substantive comments to add to the discussion. However, thank you Misterfido! I've been looking for anything to use instead of horrible Adobe Reader and after five minutes with Foxit I'm a convert! Tom