Opening files from browser in alternative formats

[technossomy]

It happens that a search result in a browser, say Firefox, is in an alternative format, say PDF. This is fine as long as the associated application is actually installed. Regarding this particular example I have encountered two problems:

1- The browser asks the user which application to open it up with, however the first folder in which the user should navigate to locate the application is the user's home folder. I find this odd as the user should hardly be encumbered with knowing *where* an application is located. At the most the user should know *which* application is to be used.

2- The PDF add-on from Firefox is not a browser-based installer. It requires that the application is downloaded and installed, which requires some knowledge of POSIX based installation procedures.

Perhaps I am missing something, and this has been thought out somehow in a way that I am unaware of. Hopefully someone can enlighten me, apart from the suggestion to use Konqueror.

[anomie]

All I can suggest is that you locate the program (e.g. which acroread) and then point firefox to it. Save the behavior so that you're not prompted in the future.

There may be a cleverer way, but I haven't spent a lot of time exploring it.