We are studying a curious phenomina with 534 WebFOCUS and adobe acrobat reader 6.0.1. versus 436 from whence we just came. In 436 all pdfs are saved temporarily in the local settings/temp folder as ".tmp" files which then open within the browser as ".pdf" files. In 534 they populate in the temp folder as ".fdf" and don't open in the browser. We have the adobe settings set to display PDF in browser. Now the kicker is we have one known desktop that still displays the pdf's in 534 the same way as 436. Has anyone been through this?

Have you checked the setting in Adobe? The user can change how PDF's will display on their machine by changing the 'Internet' preferences.

Yes and they appear to be set correctly, there is something in what the new servelet version and the old cgi version are passing across from the server to the browser that is switching the property from displaying in the browser to forcing a save file on the local hard drive.

There is a 2 part interaction on how documents are handled by the browser. The first part is from the server, and the 2nd from the browser. You don't mention which browser or server you're using, so this is just a general description.

From the server, part of the http header is the "Content-type:". This is defined in the mime.types configuration file for the http server if the file is already generated and you are only providing a link to the file. If the file is being streamed in-line, the CGI or applet would provide the "Content-type:" header. Most likely the PDF file is being sent as "Content-type: application/pdf". But another common type is "Content-type: application/octet-stream", which will force your browser to ask where you want to save it. This is where I think your CGI version may be differing from the applet version.

The next part is the browser itself. I don't use Windows Explorer, so can't talk to that, but with Mozilla it's in "Edit" --> "Preferences" --> "Navigator" --> "Helper Applications". In FireFox it's "Tools" --> "Options" --> "Downloads" --> "File Types" or "Plug-Ins".

Hopefully this will steer you in the right direction.