The Documents page on my website has always functioned properly until now. You drop down one of the categories, click on a file, and it opens the right file in a separate tab, where you can view or download it.
Today, one member of my office tried this and it only resulted in opening a blank tab. When I tried it from my computer, it just downloaded the file straight to my computer but didn’t open a tab at all. Is this a bug or is something wrong in my design?
The behavior of file downloads depends on a lot of things. I suspect if its “always worked” a particular way it’s due to some specifics always being the same.
Now it doesn’t due to a some changes, link settings and file types.
Here are some examples…
The Webflow server side settings on how to handle them (a server can ask the browser to display inline or download without displaying inline), the file type, and the users settings on their computer.
For example, the file “2022 Older Persons’ Ministry Fund” opens a new tab in my browser and displays it inline.
This is due to my browser settings allowing this file type (PDF) to do that and the Webflow servers “asking” the browser if the file can be downloaded this way.
As another example, the file “ACC Accountability Form” is a Word DOC file. I don’t allow my browser (and most don’t by default) to open that file type inline, regardless of what Webflows server is “asking” my browser to do. So instead the browsers only other option is to ask if I want to download it.
I took a peek at the first link, the PDF document, and you have it set to open a new window (browser tab) when someone clicks it.
This is a setting in Webflow you can choose to turn on or not for each link.
I’d suspect that the experience of it opening a blank tab was due to the file not getting downloaded (network hiccup) and the link setting telling the browser to open this in a new tab.
The downloading straight to your computer without opening a tab was most likely the link setting. That link didn’t force the opening of a new browser window (tab). Further, it was most likely a document type that your browser doesn’t allow to view inline.
Unfortunately there is no way for you to control how this works 100% of the time, for every site visitor. It’s dependent how their own browser settings (plus the other things I mentioned above).
Thanks so much for investigating the links and clarifying those mechanics. That’s very helpful.
All of the links are (or should be) set to open in a new tab, but I hadn’t realised that Word docs won’t open inline – I think all the links I had tested today were Word docs. It seems like a combination of that and a network hiccup for my colleague. Just tried to open a PDF inline and it worked as expected.