Left-clicking a PDF in GitHub should display it in the browser or download it?

Question

I have a PDF hosted in a GitHub directory. I have a link to this PDF in my README.md as follows -

[foo](https://github.com/me/bar_repo/foo.pdf)

so that users can find it easily when they access the repository. However when they click the link instead of opening the PDF in the browser or downloading it, the users is brought to the github page with url - https://github.com/me/bar_repo/foo.pdf - and here they have options to "View Raw", "Open", etc...(and the Open command requires installation of GitHub for windows...sigh).

I simply want to let users view the PDF in the browser or be given the option to download it if they left-click this link, as is usually the case when people click on links for PDFs on the net.

Does anyone know how I can make this happen?

Answer 1

You need to link to the raw version. So on the resulting page, context click the Raw button, and choose Copy link address and use that URL in your README.

Answer 2

A simpler option should be available since March 17th, 2015:
"PDF Viewing"

Simply browse to a PDF document and we'll render it in your browser like any other file.
From presentations to papers, we've got you covered.
Many thanks to Mozilla and every contributor to PDF.js.