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Trouble Downloading .pdf from Newsletter

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 8:03 am
by caj36
I don't have all of the details, but I'm receiving reports that some members are having difficulty downloading a .pdf that was attached to a newsletter article. See image for an example of an error which was received:
Newsletter Error.JPG
(36.24 KiB) Downloaded 120 times
Is anyone else experiencing similar issues? Any suggestions for a workaround?

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 9:18 am
by caj36
I have somewhat of an update. So far I'm only receiving complaints from people who are trying to download the file using Internet Explorer. To be clear, it is not affecting all IE users (it works fine on my computer). I have had users report that they couldn't download with IE, but could download with Firefox on the same computer. I don't have any further info at this time.

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 10:14 am
by JamesAnderson
That is a new type of error to me. I've never seen IE or anything else not ' find' the site involved in a link. If the site was actually dead it would throw an entirely different error, or if the content (such as the .pdf shown) was removed it would also show a different error message.

Someone at engineering needs to look at this I think.

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 1:06 pm
by jdlessley
A quick Google search turned up an issue related to downloading files over HTTPS (secure sites) for IE 6, 7, 8, and 9. For IE 9 see knowledge base article 2549423. For IE 8 see knowledge base article 812935. Note the kb812935 article for IE 8 references IE 6. Microsoft explains the issue and workaround are the same for IE 6, 7, and 8.

I would try the workarounds in the appropriate knowledge base article to see if that solves the issue. Since I am not experiencing the issue I cannot test the workaround.

Microsoft also notes that "Web sites that want to allow this type of operation should remove the no-cache header or headers." This may be something the programmers may need to look into.

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 1:27 pm
by caj36
jdlessley wrote: Microsoft also notes that "Web sites that want to allow this type of operation should remove the no-cache header or headers." This may be something the programmers may need to look into.

Thank you for the response. I'll see if I can test the above on one of the computers experiencing the problem, but the problem is that the problems are being experienced by members spread around my Stake (very large geography). Troubleshooting these issues on a case-by-case basis is going to be unworkable on the large scale.

Where do I submit a bug report to have the programmers look into your above-described "no-cache" solution?

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 2:37 pm
by jdlessley
This is one of the forums that we have developers/programmers visit regularly. You can also submit feedback by clicking the link, "Do You Have Feedback about This Page?" on the blue ribbon on the Newsletter page.

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 4:16 pm
by aebrown
I'm not a regular user of Internet Explorer, so I wasn't seeing this problem. But I did try it on IE8 and could duplicate the problem every time.

I noticed that I only had IE8 on this computer, so I decided to install IE9 so that I could be more up to date. I figured I could always use the developer tools to emulate IE8 whenever I wanted, so I had nothing to lose. However, after I upgraded to IE9, I could no longer duplicate the problem. It doesn't matter what browser mode or document mode I choose; the attachment downloads correctly.

So I wonder if one factor might be the actual version of IE being used. It's also possible that the act of installing IE9 cleaned up some configuration setting that was causing the problem.

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 8:02 pm
by jdlessley
I am also not a regular user of Internet Explorer. I use Firefox but have IE8 installed so I tried to download a PDF file from Newsletter using IE8. I duplicated the problem.

The problem is caused by IE8 honoring the no-cache setting in the header. If IE can't save the item in it's cache it can't download it to the hard drive.

I found a fix that worked for me. The solution is to override the no-cache directive for Internet Explorer 8. The solution was written for IE5 and I adapted it to work for IE8. The solution required a registry edit.

Unfortunately this type of solution is a per user or per computer fix that becomes quite unwieldy when a number of members need a solution. The best solution would be for the ICS programmers to get involved.

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 10:13 pm
by aebrown
jdlessley wrote:The problem is caused by IE8 honoring the no-cache setting in the header. If IE can't save the item in it's cache it can't download it to the hard drive.

The problem is not with IE8 "honoring" the no-cache setting. IE8 doesn't handle it properly (and earlier versions of IE as well). That's why other browsers work fine, why Microsoft supplied a hotfix, and why IE9 works properly now.
jdlessley wrote:The best solution would be for the ICS programmers to get involved.
I guess that as long as faulty, but popular browsers exist, it could make sense for ICS programmers to figure out a workaround for such browsers.

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 10:19 pm
by jdlessley
aebrown wrote:I guess that as long as faulty, but popular browsers exist, it could make sense for ICS programmers to figure out a workaround for such browsers.
What other solution do we have? We do not get to choose for people what browser they use. Issues such as this are why I no longer use IE on my own computer.