Firefox hangs on PDF link
Asked by Mark Van Rossum:

Hi

I have firefox set such that it opens PDFs with an external app. I don't use firefox buildin previewer.

When I try to open the following link (note the preview in the URL)

<https://workspace.nottingham.ac.uk/display/Maths/Teaching+and+Timetabling?preview=%2F90049570%2F273984579%2FProcedure+for+Introducing+and+Modifying+a+Course+or+Module.pdf>

Firefox just hangs there with greyed out screen and spinning wait cursor forever.

PDFs from other websites never give problems. It also works fine under Opera and Chrome, which use their default config and their buildin preview.

Mark


Answers:
author: AhmadDanial
body: Hello, Mark.

One of the best ways to understand what the browser was trying to do when you try to open the link is to use the **web developer** tools to view the web requests that are being done. For example, this is what I am seeing on my end when trying to open the link on Firefox:

![Screen Shot 2018-10-02 at 14.07.28.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/33808i607C3D013A0AFB28/image-dimensions/484x271?v=v2 "Screen Shot 2018-10-02 at 14.07.28.png")

You also mentioned that you are using an external application to open the pdf file. Can you please share it here? I just want to see if this issue is specific to the add-on not playing nice with Confluence on Firefox specifically versus Chrome and Opera's default config. Thanks.

comments: author: Mark Van Rossum
body: ![Screenshot at 2018-10-02 19-08-10.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/33900i7BC75B2279CF90A4/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot at 2018-10-02 19-08-10.png")![Screenshot at 2018-10-02 19-08-18.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/33901i1D363945961A4DA7/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot at 2018-10-02 19-08-18.png")


author: Mark Van Rossum
body: Hi

Thanks for looking into this.

I attach two tabs from the webdeveloper tools above.

I have tried Acroread, okular, as well as the "Save File" as the PDF association in firefox. In all cases it hangs.


author: AhmadDanial
body: Hi, Mark.

You are welcome. As per the following statement:
> as well as the "Save File" as the PDF association in firefox

I would assume that you were unable to even save / preview the file in Firefox itself. I could not reproduce the issue on my end so far using 6.11.0 as the .pdf gets previewed and downloaded properly.

Meanwhile, are you able to view the pdf from the **Attachment**page itself instead of trying to view it from the page itself?

![Screen Shot 2018-10-03 at 11.48.25.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/33934iD72AD44D096A4E80/image-dimensions/502x89?v=v2 "Screen Shot 2018-10-03 at 11.48.25.png")

Is this also happening to **all pdf**files in every pages in your Confluence instance?


author: Mark Van Rossum
body: Some updates:

-From that particular confluence page, it seems to happen for all documents. Also docx files.

Here is a snippet from the HTML source of

```
<li><a href="view-source:https://workspace.nottingham.ac.uk/download/attachments/90049570/MELEES%20intro%202012.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1350383677000&api=v2" data-linked-resource-id="134513903" data-linked-resource-version="1" data-linked-resource-type="attachment" data-linked-resource-default-alias="MELEES intro 2012.pdf" data-nice-type="PDF Document" data-linked-resource-content-type="&quot;application/pdf&quot;" data-linked-resource-container-id="90049570" data-linked-resource-container-version="90">Melees Information</a></li>
```

- Works fine if I go to the attachements pages.

- Pages from other departments here work fine.


author: AhmadDanial
body: Hi, Mark.

Thank you for providing me with all the details. At this point, it most likely sounds like the page itself is problematic since you mentioned that:

* all attachments are affected
* no issues in other pages
* no problem when viewing it from attachments page

On a high level, can you please confirm if you are using scripts, add-ons, and how large the page is? If needed, I will reach out to the Confluence team for further assistance via a support ticket. Thanks.