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Comment by thomascgalvin | Hacker News Reader

My big issue, which should be easily correctable, is that every menu QR code I've scanned results in a PDF that I have to download.

Nobody wants PDFs. On desktop sites, it's common to add a (PDF Warning) to links that lead to PDFs.

And on a phone, PDFs are even worse. They're almost always sized for the desktop, which means you have to pinch and scroll to see anything, and I don't download stuff from Firefox often enough to know how to find and delete the menus for every single restaurant I eat at.

If the menu QR code led to a responsive website, I'd be fine with it. When the QR code leads to a PDF, it makes me angry. If the QR code led to an app I had to install, I'd walk directly out of the restaurant.

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I love scanning a QR code and having a pdf open in my browser. Faster than waiting for wait staff and easier for restaurants to change the menu. I think most people disagree that nobody wants PDFs.

PDFs are better than a paper menu, for sure, but wouldn't you prefer a website that scales properly and allows you to place orders? I think that is the point parent post is making.

This was exactly my experience as well when I recently went to some restaurants for the first time since pre-pandemic.

GP's experience sounds great; an interactive mobile/responsive website that I can directly order from would be more convenient than the traditional experience. PDFs are basically fine, but given the option I'd rather have a physical menu.

(Thankfully, I haven't yet heard of or encountered a QR code that redirected me to an app; that would be a pretty quick way to make me leave if no alternative were provided.)

Which mobile browser downloads PDFs instead of just rendering them?

DDG is one example. I prefer it this way because I can choose how to view it, and not have to redownload it in case I lose the page or the cache for the file.

All of them. The data still needs to be downloaded to be rendered.

Firefox Mobile

Maybe there's some setting I'm missing, but the default android experience seems to be Chrome downloads a pdf which then is read by Google drive.

Not really the issue with PDFs. Even if they are directly rendered the problem is they have a non-responsive rendering which forces pinch zoom and scrolling to see/read things.

> On desktop sites, it's common to add a (PDF Warning) to links that lead to PDFs.

In 2000 maybe?

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