PDF files not ending in .pdf for IE3.x

[Rich.Harrington at co.hennepin.mn.us]

Hi,

   We've been having trouble viewing Supreme Court decisions in PDF format
from the LII/Hermes Web page <
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/index.html > with Internet Explorer v.
3.02.  It used to work fine.

   What seems to have changed is that the extension of the PDF files are
not being linked to as .pdf.  If we click on a PDF link (see, for example,
< http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/97-569.ZS.html >), we get a gray
screen that indicates IE is trying to load an ActiveX component.

   However, everything works fine on my office PC with IE 4.0.  Acrobat
Reader opens and opens the file fine (which by now, interestingly, has a
.pdf extension).  We can also right-click on the link and download and get
it to work.  This would be fine for offices and at the Reference Desk, but
we also have 6 public-use PCs that I really want users to be able to just
click on the link and read the decision.

   I used to kludge a solution by associating other extensions with Acrobat
Reader when other sites gave me this problem (e.g., GPO with its .cgi
extensions), but on this Web site, the extensions are not the same all the
time.

   Aside from installing IE4 on all these workstations (which I don't
really want to do...), can anyone think of a fix, or anything to even look
at?

Thanks,
Rich Harrington
rich.harrington at co.hennepin.mn.us
Hennepin County Law Library
Minneapolis, MN