CDF browser plugin and Wolfram library archive
Thomas Muench
There is a strange behavior (correct, but not user-friendly in my opinion)
when one has the new Mathematica browser plugin installed, and wants to
download example notebooks from the Wolfram Library Archive.
See for example here: http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/Courseware/7800/
When one clicks on the link to download the .nb file, the file will open in
the browser plugin, not with the Mathematica application itself. To avoid
this I would normally just right-click on the link, and choose "Save link
as...". But that only provides access to the link-IMAGE, not to the notebook
behind it.
This is the same behavior in Chrome and Firefox.
Very annoying.
Thomas
Murray Eisenberg
But it's worse that what your report. You used to be able to go to a
page at demonstrations.wolfram.com, e.g.,
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/new.html
and download a "demonstration" by using the right-click maneuver. That's
no longer possible.
What you have to do now, in either case, is to wait for the notebook
(.nb) or .cdf file to open in the browser plug-in and then use the icon
the plug-in embeds in the page to save the file to disk.
A more reasonable approach would be to include a user-settable option in
the plug-in, so that if you clicked on a link to a .nb or .cdf, you
would get a little pop-up asking whether you want to download or view;
or you could set the option so it always downloads; or you could set it
so it always opens the file in the browser.
(That's the way a Firefox extension works with .pdf files.)
--
Murray Eisenberg mur...@math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H)
University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W)
710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801
Amherst, MA 01003-9305
cesar
alt + click
cg
Ingolf Dahl
one "Save As" button, and one "Open in Mathematica" button. Maybe useful?
Best regards
Ingolf Dahl
-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Fr=E5n: Thomas Muench [mailto:thomas...@gmail.com]
Skickat: den 8 april 2011 10:13
Till: math...@smc.vnet.net
=C4mne: CDF browser plugin and Wolfram library archive
George Woodrow III
I agree that it is not user-friendly -- mostly a wast of time to load the file in the browser when all you want it to save it.
george
Murray Eisenberg
already had to wait for the notebook to open (using the player or
Mathematica itself) in the browser window.
On 4/9/2011 7:12 AM, Ingolf Dahl wrote:
> When I open the nb file in the browser, for me there is one "Save" button,
> one "Save As" button, and one "Open in Mathematica" button. Maybe useful?
>
> Best regards
>
> Ingolf Dahl
>
> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> Fr=E5n: Thomas Muench [mailto:thomas...@gmail.com]
> Skickat: den 8 april 2011 10:13
> Till: math...@smc.vnet.net
> =C4mne: CDF browser plugin and Wolfram library archive
>
> Dear group,
>
> There is a strange behavior (correct, but not user-friendly in my opinion)
> when one has the new Mathematica browser plugin installed, and wants to
> download example notebooks from the Wolfram Library Archive.
> See for example here: http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/Courseware/7800/
>
> When one clicks on the link to download the .nb file, the file will open in
> the browser plugin, not with the Mathematica application itself. To avoid
> this I would normally just right-click on the link, and choose "Save link
> as...". But that only provides access to the link-IMAGE, not to the notebook
> behind it.
>
> This is the same behavior in Chrome and Firefox.
>
> Very annoying.
>
> Thomas
>
--
George Woodrow III
It is a matter of taste, but I find it useful when looking at demonstrations from the wolfram site. With previous versions, I would end up downloading promising files that turned out to be less than expected.
For anything else, I usually just want to download the file. Fortunately, the plug-in is easy to turn off in Safari.
george
On Apr 9, 2011, at 5:58 PM, Helen Read wrote:
> On 4/9/2011 7:13 AM, George Woodrow III wrote:
>>
>> I agree that it is not user-friendly -- mostly a wast of time to load the file in the browser when all you want it to save it.
>>
>> george
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm so far not really seeing the point
> of the browser plug-in. It is extremely slow for the plug-in to start up
> and open a file in the browser, often to the point of hanging or even
> crashing Firefox. And I don't really get why I would ever want to open a
> .nb in the browser, when I have Mathematica installed. I'd like to
> download the file or open it directly in Mathematica. For people with
> the Player only, I can see opening up files in the browser plug-in, or I
> suppose if people start commonly embedding CDFs into a webpage (a la
> embedded Flash video), but other than that, I don't get it.
>
> I have set the .nb file action in Firefox back to the old behavior of
> opening the file in Mathematica on most of my computers. It's still set
> to open .nb files in the browser plug-in on our classroom computers, and
> I see the students getting annoyed when they forget to do a right-click
> Save Link As, and end up with the file opening up -- very slowly -- in
> Firefox. We might change the setting the next time we re-image the
> classrooms, but I fear it will sow confusion when students are working
> on their own laptops (which will by default open .nb's in the browser
> plug-in).
>
>
> --
> Helen Read
> University of Vermont
>
Murray Eisenberg
any choice as to whether to view it in the browser or download it: you
MUST first view it in the browser (if you have the plug-in) and only
then can opt to download it.
--
Syd Geraghty
Although not quite as easy as you suggest:
> Fortunately, the plug-in is easy to turn off in Safari.
>
> george
I managed to find out how to do it on my Mac system (detailed below) with a little exploring.
For others who have been following this thread the trick is:
Locate the file "Mathematica.plugin" in the path " /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Mathematica.plugin" and remove it from the Internet Plug-Ins Directory.
This also has the considerable merit that it works for all the browsers on my system (Safari, FireFox, Chrome).
I now do not have to deal with the bizarre behavior of the CDF Player/Plug-in combo (I hope there are no strange consequences of removal of the Mathematica.plugin, I have seen none so far).
One other hope is that WRI might make downloading Demonstrations source code for the Mathematica user a simpler process. The downloaded source notebook cannot be Saved or Saved As on my system. I have to copy from the downloaded source file and paste to a New Notebook several sets of expressions individually to get an Editable/Savable version which includes the citation and reference material for future attribution purposes. I thought one of the important benefits WRI advertises for the Demonstrations Project was pedagogic. As such the current process for getting source code for a demonstration to experiment with and use as a learning tool is far from easy.
If anyone has a more streamlined way of accomplishing this I would be very glad to try it.
Cheers .... Syd
Syd Geraghty B.Sc, M.Sc.
Mathematica 8.0 for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit) (February 23, 2011)
ReleaseID: 8.0.1.0 (2063982, 2063639)
MacOS X V 10.6.7 Snow Leopard
MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2GB RAM
Heike Gramberg
left-nost drop down menu, and set Notebook Options > File Options > Saveable to true.
You can also do it programmatically by evaluating
SetOptions[SelectedNotebook[], Saveable -> True]
within the downloaded demonstration. Or if you want to change this option for several notebooks in one go you
could open them all up and do something like
SetOptions[#, Saveable -> True] & /@ Notebooks[]
Heike.