thomblake comments on Why Academic Papers Are A Terrible Discussion Forum - Less Wrong

25 Post author: alyssavance 20 June 2012 06:15PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 26 June 2012 10:55:50PM 2 points [-]

When I click on a PDF link, my web browser opens the PDF in another tab. It's a quick and easy way to view PDFs without downloading them onto my hard drive. If you have an aversion to downloading PDFs but would still like to read them, then you may want to enable that feature in your web browser.

Comment author: thomblake 27 June 2012 12:43:16PM 0 points [-]

It's a quick and easy way to view PDFs without downloading them onto my hard drive.

Just FYI, when you click a link and view content, that content has been downloaded onto your hard drive, even if you only see it on a browser window..

you may want to enable that feature in your web browser.

The browser PDF readers are even worse than standalone Adobe Acrobat (especially in Chrome, which is my primary web browser).

I'd rather just not support the use of such a broken file format.

Comment author: Rain 27 June 2012 03:52:18PM *  1 point [-]

The browser PDF readers are even worse than standalone Adobe Acrobat (especially in Chrome, which is my primary web browser).

My opinion is the opposite, to the point I've set Chrome as my default program for PDFs, even those on my local hard drive. IIRC, it's based on the open source Foxit reader.

Comment author: thomblake 27 June 2012 04:58:21PM 0 points [-]

Chrome's PDF reader is missing a lot of features. Notably, no page numbers / jump to page.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 June 2012 03:30:40PM -1 points [-]

Really? I thought viewing it in my browser is more akin to streaming a video. But I could easily be wrong about that.

Ah, okay. I use Firefox with an Adobe Acrobat plugin. Not familiar at all with Chrome and other PDF readers.

Comment author: thomblake 27 June 2012 03:40:08PM 0 points [-]

I thought viewing it in my browser is more akin to streaming a video.

The difference is minor. FWIW, a better analogy might be downloading a video file to your browser's temp directory and then opening it in VLC to watch while it's still downloading.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 June 2012 03:44:37PM -1 points [-]

Gotcha. Thank you for the correction.