I noticed an odd behavior with this link; it doesn't open the pdf in my browser ... | Hacker News

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inetsee on June 10, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: RISC-V Bitmanip Extension [pdf]

I noticed an odd behavior with this link; it doesn't open the pdf in my browser (Firefox), and it doesn't ask if I want to save the pdf file. It just downloads the pdf file without any notification. I don't recall ever seeing an invisible download like this before.

klodolph on June 10, 2019 [–]

You can do this with the header:

    Content-Disposition: attachment

That's the correct way to do it. What's actually happening is that the wrong content type is being returned:

    Content-Type: application/octet-stream

This is the lazy way to do it.

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