Strange bug in opening PDFs

vsyverson
Zotero (2.0) contains a bug which causes Firefox to open new blank tabs indefinitely until killed.

Circumstances: I saved a PDF from Paleontologica Electronica and retrieved metadata by right clicking on the PDF in my Zotero toolbar. This created an item with the correct title containing the PDF. When I subsequently tried opening it by double-clicking on the item, the infinite-series-of-tabs thing started happening. The same happened with "View Snapshot".

Opening the containing folder with "Show File" worked just fine.

Has anyone else had this bug? are there plans to deal with it?
  • Bionatsci
    I haven't heard of this bug and certainly don't experience it myself. Which version of Firefox are you using? How long has this been happening? Does it happen with all PDFs or just this one? Also, have you checked the list of incompatible extensions?
  • dstillman
    edited January 24, 2010
    It's almost certainly not a Zotero bug. If disabling other extensions doesn't fix it, delete mimeType.rdf in your Firefox profile, which stores file-handling settings, and restart Firefox.
  • vsyverson
    Interesting. Deleting mimeType.rdf got rid of the problem. Thank you. How did I end up with this file-handling setting, I wonder?

    (For the record: I was not using any incompatible extensions, and the problem only occurred with PDFs from this one journal.)
  • ADil
    I have the same problem with zotero 2.0.3 in firefox 3.6.8 and I believe also in an earlier version of firefox. No incompatible plugins as far as I know.

    It doesn't seem to have happened with all pdfs, but did with this one
    (top hit on this google)

    http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=correcting+spelling+errors+by+modelling+their&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

    Saved to zotero, clicked on link, tab explosion and the same every time I've tried it since then.

    Right-clicking on the link opened the file okay in Foxit PDF reader.

    I'm going to try this suggestion to delete mimetype.RDF
  • ADil
    I used tools/options/applications in firefox and changed the program for pdf to foxit plugin for firefox instead of foxit. That fixed it! (Also foxit fdf type was set to Adobe for some reason.)

    Clicking on the link in zotero, the pdf then opened in Adobe, so quite what is going on I don't know! Feels like Adobe and foxit aren't playing nicely together.

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