An ArXiv PDF Mime Fix for Firefox 3.0 : The Quantum Pontiff

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Dave Bacon is a theoretical ski bum who is also a pseudo professor. His research is on quantum computing, his scientific passions extend to everything in physics, mathematics, computer science and beyond, and his personal pleasures include making wine, playing poker, skiing, camping, and daydreaming (although not all of those at the same time.) Nothing he says on this blog should be construed as having anything to do with his employer or his dog.

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An ArXiv PDF Mime Fix for Firefox 3.0

Category: Technology
Posted on: April 4, 2008 10:54 AM, by Dave Bacon

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Previously, I had found a way to get a Mac running Firefox to not choke on recognizing pdfs correctly when downloaded from the arxiv.org. Commenter Dan has tracked down the reason for this and suggested another way to fix this which should be compatible with the latest versions of Firefox:

Update:

It seems that the source of this bug is the following problem:

Arxiv.org does not like Macs! :-O

Fortunately, there is an easy work around: Using the UserAgent Switcher extension, you fool arxiv.org into thinking your web-browser is running Windows.

Then the PDF download problem goes away! No MIME type hackery is needed.

The technical reasons for this are explained in this thread:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=3322008

Thanks, Dan!

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