PDF downloads not working with SwitchyOmega extension

dstillman Zotero Team
This discussion was created from comments split from: ACM and IEEE PDF downloads not working via proxy.
  • dvcirilo
    I've been unable to save IEEEXplore pdfs lately too, e.g. D722323754.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited April 10, 2021
    Downloading file from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stampPDF/getPDF.jsp[…]

    Downloaded PDF was not a PDF

    @dvcirilo: What kind of connection is this? Direct institutional connection? VPN? System proxy? Web-based proxy? When you view the PDF in your browser, is the domain just ieeexplore.ieee.org or does it contain something related to your institution?
  • dvcirilo
    In this instance it's a http proxy via SwitchyOmega extension on Google Chrome. I've been using this setup for quite some time without issues, I'm not sure but maybe the problems started when I switched to the Zotero Beta client. When I use the institutional web based proxy it works fine, although it's not my preferred method.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Oh, that won't work. The Zotero app, which performs the actual file downloads, needs to be connecting via the same proxy as the browser. In the case of a web-based proxy, the Zotero Connector passes the cookies that make that possible. Otherwise, it has to be a system-level connection.
  • dvcirilo
    Yeah, it makes total sense, but I'm pretty sure it worked like that before. Maybe I'm mistaken.
    Anyways, thanks for the support!

  • dstillman Zotero Team
    No, this never would've been different in the standalone version of Zotero. If your browser's proxy server is controlled by a browser extension, the Zotero app would never have known anything about that.

    If you used the old "Zotero for Firefox" extension years ago (pre-2017), the browser's connection would have applied to downloads. For a few years Zotero has also downloaded open-access PDFs when they're available if it can't download a gated PDF.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Oh, and if you save directly to your online library with the Zotero app closed, the browser connection would apply. But that's otherwise a bit more limited.
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