Web Application FAQ
Sending PDF Content
Sending PDF content can be tricky due to browser idiosyncrasities. What we use at my site is:
- If you provide a filename, e.g., in a Content-Disposition header, you must use a .pdf extension. MSIE will look at filename extensions instead of the mime-type.
- Set the Content-Length in the header. MSIE seems to be the most easily confused.
- If you use HTTPS you must not set the Cache-Control pragma to 'no-cache'. MSIE is very literal and will discard your content before it can read it!
- You need to play with the Content-Disposition header. At our site we use 'attachment;filename=...' for Firefox, and 'inline' for all other browsers, but we have some weird needs.