PDF Files via ASP

[Guest]

Utilities company have bills online for viewing. These are in pdf format but
not directly accessable ie you cant right click and "save as". You have to
click on a link for your current bill, this then opens up a popup IE window
saying "retreiving your bill". File download blocked so you allow download,
You then get open "billview.asp" then "do you want to open or save the file?"
You select Open, but the pdf format bill wont open in the window for viewing
the bill. Gets stuck in a loop asking to open the billview.asp all the
time. Any ideas? Using Foxit 2. Do not want to try bloatware Adobe just to
view pdf files. Used to work with Foxit ok on older system with IE6 and W2K

 

[Andrew McLaren]

Not sure I understand the scenario, but you can't "open" an ASP file -
that's a file of Active Server Page code, not a document.

Many such billing websites don't have links to a static PDF doc, waiting for
you to download. Instead, the link is to an ASP page, which will pull your
billing info from the database as required, turn it into a PDF, and maybe
kick off a file download for you. You don't want to open an ASP page -
that's just program code.

Probably the easiest solution would be to "Save" rather than Open, and the
ASP code will downlaod the PDF file to your hard disk.

If that isn't how the website works, you may need to take it up with the
guys who run the website. They probably have a Help or Contact Us link.
Whether you have PDF associated with Foxit or Adobe Reader will make no
difference, to how the website handles PDF files. There may be an error in
the logic of their ASP code, if you can't save the PDF file to disk.

Hope it helps,
Andrew