Home/ Questions/Q 1005443
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-16T08:17:47+00:00

Browsers can display certain media inline, and will provided they are sent with content-disposition:

  • 0

Browsers can display certain media inline, and will provided they are sent with content-disposition: inline. What’s the best way to detect whether the browser is capable of doing so with a particular type of media?

I am running into the question lately with PDFs and Mac/FF, which seems to refuse to display PDFs inline (actually, in iFrame), instead prompting a download. I don’t mind the forced download; I’d just like to be able to anticipate it so that I can give the end user a nice “download” link rather than an iFrame that fails at displaying inline content. My current solution is just browser detection (sample code below), but surely there must be a better mode.

var isMacFF = window.navigator.userAgent.search(/Mozilla.*Mac/i) != -1
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This doesn’t directly answer the question, but something you need to be aware when analyzing any answer you get – you can NOT reliably 100% determine that due to assorted browser plug-ins.

    Specifically, in case of FireFox, look at PDF Downloader as an example – it basically allows the user 100% full control over how PDF gets displayed.

    • 0