Now it's completely impossible to open PDFs outside Firefox, as I could do until the last couple of beta versions. This trend is going on since a few years ago, from bad to worst. The whole design of the PDFs download process is bad. PDFs should be treated by FF as any other file: download and open with the system default PDF viewer. Imposing Firefox's internal PDF viewer as mandatory for downloaded PDFs is nonsense.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1935718 > Cannot open pdf in external app > Bug 1935718 Opened 4 days ago Closed 4 hours ago > Nicholas Poon [:Nick] > Thanks for reporting this bug. This was done intentionally in Bug 1920092, so I will close this as WONTFIX. > The rationale behind this was: > To mirror what currently happens in desktop Firefox

Question now would be: what are they smoking? This IS NOT how desktop FF behaves. I've been using FF for desktop for decades, I open PDFs outside FF all the time on my PC. That's the whole point! Android FF SHOULD work like the desktop version still does, offering choices:

   a) to open PDFs outside FF with just a single tap on a PDF link
   b) to open PDFs with the system PDF app
   c) to open PDFs with a different app (including Firefox, if so they want)
   d) to save PDFs without opening them

And let users choose to set a default behaviour between these options OR being asked all the times.

At the very least, Android FF should keep on opening PDFs outside it like it did until just a few betas ago.

There are no words for how absurd is having to explain this to programmers. Are they just a bunch of narcissistic egos?

The default on desktop Firefox is to always view PDFs in a tab. However, there is a setting for that so you can default it to Acrobat or another external viewer.

I'm currently running Nightly on Android, and while I don't mind an extra step to download the PDF after it displays in a tab, there is no obvious way to then view that PDF in Acrobat:

• Tapping the download tile opens the file in another tab. It's already open in a tab! Why not offer a choice here?
• Tapping the file on the Downloads list opens the file in a tab. Ditto.
• "Open in App" is not available on the menu for either the original PDF or the downloaded PDF. Why not?

There is a lot that could be improved here. However, it sounds like you may need to come at it from another angle. Mozilla Connect is a product suggestion site intended to identify users' highest priorities for development. If you have time, I think it would be a good idea to post this request there to get into the current feedback stream. Use the "Ideas" section of the site (at https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/idb-p/ideas).

And meanwhile, over on Adobe's side, why can't it show the most recent downloads first. Alphabetical is a pain.

There is a lot that could be improved here.

This sounds like a great understatement to me. When it comes to PDFs, Mobile Firefox not only does things badly even in its own ways, but now it's heavily crippled, lacking any ability to launch the system app for PDFs.

But we shouldn't even come to explain this, it's elementary. The worst thing is that programmers themselves won't admit this, evidently. At least I suppose Mr Nicholas Poon who gave that incomprehensible answer on Bugzilla is one of them, together with the others who decided this course since when PDFjs was incorporated in mobile FF, and now went for this final blow that makes FF not only crippled with respect to the desktop version, but even compared with Chrome and other mobile browsers that handle PDFs files correctly. I wonder on what planet do they live to even think about this nonsense, let alone actually going for it.

Since about four years ago, when PDFjs was introduced, there has been an overwhelming feedback on all FF forums that showed with utter evidence that the way it was implemented was bad, and the idea to put obstacles to launching external apps for PDFs was unacceptable. If users' feedback has been completely ignored for all these years, it means that mobile FF programmers live in their own private world. It's very sad.

I'm looking around to see if I can switch to another browser for both, mobile and desktop, because the communication between the two is important. If one goes, the other falls too, unfortunately.