MP3 and PDF tags

December 15, 2007 12:36 PM

You know those little MP3 or PDF tags on Wikipedia external links (see last external link), informing users they are about to click on a special file along with the file size? That would sure be nice for MeFi.
posted by stbalbach to Feature Requests at 12:36 PM (26 comments total)

Dunno if Mefi should implement this when people can just write the file type and size in square brackets, e.g. [PDF, 1.5 MB].

I use an Opera user javascript that pretty much does this minus the file size; hover over a link and the appropriate mime type icon is displayed. Minor feature, yes, but quite nice.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:04 PM on December 15, 2007

It wouldn't be all that hard to examine the URL and note pdf extensions, if nothing else. That would take care of a lot of the linked files. They're already doing it for youtube, so it might not be that hard?
posted by maxwelton at 1:33 PM on December 15, 2007

There's a Firefox extension for that, too.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 1:42 PM on December 15, 2007

Ah c'mon stbalbach. The real point of this post was to show us that you read Camus in your spare time. Clever boots.
posted by Abiezer at 1:48 PM on December 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Amy Camus?
posted by wendell at 1:52 PM on December 15, 2007

What horrible things happen to your computer if you click a PDF file?

(this is not a retorical question -- I haven't used windows in a long time, but I assume something bad happens since people keep complaining about PDF files)
posted by you at 1:53 PM on December 15, 2007

I think broadly the complaint is more about Acrobat's Reader than PDF files themselves. /plugs Foxit Reader
posted by Doofus Magoo at 2:02 PM on December 15, 2007

Until I can find a PalmOS web browser that shows me where a link goes before I click it, this would be very helpful.

Also, I don't think I can favorite anything from my phone. Did the AJAXiness break favoriting for us low-tek browsers?
posted by Eideteker at 2:11 PM on December 15, 2007

There is also Sumatra for quick PDF viewing outside a browser.
posted by cedar at 2:13 PM on December 15, 2007

The problem with a PDF document is that you do not know the size and Adobe Acrobat apparently doesn't have the ability to prompt you and say "Here are the first 5 pages, download the rest?" You then have situations where you'll click a link and find a 300 page document that only a bureaucrat could love and the only useful information is in the abstract.

So you click a link and your browser freezes for awhile and you can't go back or exit out and maybe, just maybe, if you are lucky enough you can go onto another tab. In any case this Firefox extension works reasonably well, though it is really Acrobat's fault. Recent iterations have helped, but not eliminated the problem.
posted by geoff. at 2:24 PM on December 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

You: I think the biggest complain among Windows users is that Acrobat Reader sucks. As long as one has a decent connection, Preview on OS X and Evince on *nix (though not acroread) work fine, even with relatively large files. Sadly, there are some files that are so malformed they'll only work on Acrobat Reader/acroread.

Anyway, I think a lot of people only experience PDF through AR, and so they (like me, before I started using other OS' and PDF readers) assume that it's the format that sucks, rather than the reader.

For anyone stuck using Windows: you can remove a lot of the 'default' plugins (Google for specific) to speed things up. It still sucks a bit, but it's a lot better than t he stock install.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 2:35 PM on December 15, 2007

Adobe Acrobat apparently doesn't have the ability to prompt you and say "Here are the first 5 pages, download the rest?"

It does, actually, but that needs to be set up by the people serving the documents.
posted by grouse at 2:45 PM on December 15, 2007

That would sure be nice for MeFi.

Seconded.
posted by languagehat at 3:29 PM on December 15, 2007

Wow, this comes up in MetaTalk every 5 days or so. Perhaps there should be a policy, or something in the FAQ?
posted by blue_beetle at 3:34 PM on December 15, 2007

Having something as policy or in the FAQ doesn't keep it from coming up yet another time in MetaTalk. It just means there's a supply of "OMG FAQ LOLZ" responses at the ready when it does.
posted by grouse at 4:11 PM on December 15, 2007

If only we had computers to automatically do the work for us..

Thanks geoff. and cedar, I'll check those out.

you read Camus in your spare time

Only at work. In search of lost time I read Proust.
posted by stbalbach at 4:27 PM on December 15, 2007

The major problem with PDF is that it does not have threaded loading. So on Firefox, when you download a new HTML page, firefox starts downloading the page, and shows it to you bit by bit as it downloads. If you decide you don't care, you can press the stop button.

On the other hand, Acrobat just fucking sits there. And not only that in locks up your entire browser. Because the downloading happens in the main UI thread. Even if it's just a small PDF file. If the server happens to be down, your whole browser can lock up for like 5 minutes while you wait for the remote server to respond.
posted by delmoi at 7:15 PM on December 15, 2007

an mp3 tag is nice because it lets someone know that the link has sound, but the real reason for these tags hardly applies anymore as who still has a slow dial-up connection unless you live on a farm or something
posted by caddis at 9:35 PM on December 15, 2007

the real reason for these tags hardly applies anymore as who still has a slow dial-up connection unless you live on a farm or something

And those of us who live in less than first world countries.

Also, I like the idea of tags for pdfs especially.

I have a greasemonkey script installed that puts an indicator in brackets next to wikipedia links, nytimes links, etc. Wouldn't it be possible to create a script to detect and indicate pdfs? I'm not a coder, but glancing at the code it looks like it just scans the url for specific strings, making me think it would be trivial to add detection for pdfs as well. As for file size, that seems less trivial. But one step at a time, right?
posted by mosessis at 10:25 AM on December 16, 2007

If I'm reading it correctly, that userscript does show a pdf suffix, no?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:24 PM on December 16, 2007

Heh, I think you're right. Even better.
posted by mosessis at 12:43 PM on December 16, 2007

Seems like overkill-- better to implement something on the browser side.
posted by gwint at 4:32 PM on December 16, 2007

Acrobat just fucking sits there. And not only that in locks up your entire browser

Tools > Options > Content > Manage...

Download Actions
PDF
Change Action...
Change from "Use this plugin: [whatever]" to:

Open them with the default application: [whatever]

Then, when you click on a PDF, it opens in the background, invoking whatever application is handling it. No thread locks.
posted by meehawl at 5:16 PM on December 16, 2007

Seems like overkill-- better to implement something on the browser side.

I disagree. I think it's not inappropriate to do on the server/content side, if it's something a lot of users may find useful. The point of the browser is to display the page, full stop. Some browsers may do various things to it at the direction of the user, but a site shouldn't assume that the user's browser will do anything (besides hopefully rendering the page according to standards). It should be designed for someone without any Firefox extensions or other customization.

Besides, many people may not want the badges on every site. I don't think I would; having them on a weblog/link-aggregator like MeFi is helpful, but in other circumstances they might be unnecessary, annoying, or mess up a page's design. It seems like a site-design decision.

Personally, I think a PDF-warning badge on links ending in ".pdf" would be helpful; I could go either way on external links. I don't think that marking external links on MeFi is as critical as on a site like Wikipedia or Everything2, where there are a ton of internal links.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:43 PM on December 16, 2007

connection unless you live on a farm or something

And those of us who live in less than first world countries.

...or even notionally first world countries that just happen to have crap internet plans.
posted by pompomtom at 7:25 PM on December 17, 2007

Just get this Firefox add-on, which intercepts PDF downloads and asks what you want to do with them.
posted by heydanno at 5:58 PM on December 18, 2007