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&raw=1 links no longer display on mobile devices since new year

Hello,

Is dropbox no longer supporting &raw=1 files being displayed on external websites on mobile?
It was working fine before new years.

See here: https://www.arclab.space/a/0301-pdf-topo

Odd that it works fine on desktop devices, or via chrome inspect using mobile viewport sizes, but not on actual mobile phones.
iOS returns nada, and android says 'click to open PDF' but it never works.
if you want to see how its meant to look, view the link on a desktop PC/laptop.

Please advise if this is a glitch, or if youre phasing out &raw=1 iframe display functionality.

Thanks for your time.

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Comments

Greg-DB

The raw=1 functionality itself should still work, but there's no particular guarantee on its use with an embed or iframe HTML element. You can find the official documentation for that here; that doesn't have any mention of iframe or embed.

That said, when I tried the sample page you shared on iOS, it did actually show the content of the file, though it appears there's no white background, and the black text is not visible as it blends in to the black background of the web site itself. Here's a screenshot of what I see:

I also tried accessing the raw=1 shared link from your sample page directly in the browser, and that did work visibly:

And I also made a lightweight page with just an embed element using the shared link from your sample page, and that also displayed visibly:

Does those match what you're currently seeing as well?

On Android, I do not see the file, and instead get an "Open" button. It sounds like that's expected though, as mobile Chrome apparently doesn't support previewing PDF files, per this open Chromium issue.

jonokivex

Regarding android:
Yes, an open button appears - but it doesn't open. PDFs loaded from sources other than dropbox open fine.

The black version is what we see too. Its also weirdly condensed width wise, and some grey lines & text are missing but not others. Its very strange.

Your simplified version works, but maybe if it had a black background the problem would be the same? For instance, it still compresses the width on mobile rather than shrinking to fit.

Greg-DB

Regarding the iOS display issues, since the content is there, albeit not displayed properly, it sounds like the shared link itself is working in that it is returning the file data. We can't really offer help with the display of content on web pages, as it looks like that would be more of a matter of HTML/CSS.

As for the Android issue, do you know if there is something in particular about how Dropbox is serving these that is problematic for this use case? I can't make any promises, but if there's something specific wrong about how Dropbox returns the file data I can ask the team to look into it.

jonokivex

The thing that dropbox seems to be messing up is the ability to open the file on android.
That it doesnt display is normal - thats standard behaviour on android. But you can always open it in your native viewer when the file is hosted elsewhere. When hosted via dropbox, something is blocking the functionality.

Greg-DB

I can't provide insight on what the requirements may be for that functionality to work on Android, but if you can share some information about what specifically seems to be the issue with how it's hosted on Dropbox I can request an update on our side.