PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser

The macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10

[0 to 10 lights; 10 = perfect!]

Developer: Schubert it / [Product Page]
Price: $0 [freeware]

This week's PotW is simple, indispensible to me, and easily overlooked ... which explains why it hasn't been a PotW before! We ran a hint on the program back in November, and after a very brief testing period, it has been installed on each of my Macs ever since.

What does the PDF Browser Plug-In do? Just what its name implies -- it allows you to read a PDF file directly in your browser. For me, this is an amazing timesaver, as more times than not, I'm only interested in finding some factoid buried within a PDF. Without the plug-in, I have to download the PDF, switch to the Finder, find the download, double-click it, then find what I want. With the plug-in installed, I just click the PDF link, and the file opens directly within the browser. A small (easily overlooked!) icon at the top of the scroll bar offers a drop-down menu with Page Setup, Print, and Zoom In/Out controls.

Installation is simple (drag it into a folder in your user's Library), and it seems to work with the major OS X browsers (IE excluded, at least in my testing). The only reason I gave it a "9" is that the displayed PDF will sometimes (but not always) vanish if I use the forward and back buttons in the browser; it returns with a reload, so it's just a minor annoyance.

Unless you always want to download and save PDFs for future usage, you'll find that the PDF Browser Plug-In will quickly become an essential part of your web browsing toolkit.

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PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser | 19 comments | Create New Account

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The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: muji_boy on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 3:09AM PST

yes it is very convenient. I have been using it since it was first mentioned on Mac OS X Hints and had forgotten that it was not a built-in browser feature! I have sent PDFs to friends and told them "just open it in your browser" and was baffled to hear they couldn't.

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\"who holds the key that winds up Big Ben\"

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: sonderpa on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 4:06AM PST

There's also a version available for IE. Look at the download page (version 0.4)

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: sunsoul on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 8:55AM PST

Thank you... i really mean it

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: powderhound on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 5:08PM PST

I have been using version 1.0 of the Schubert plug-in and it is great - except of course in Explorer.

I downloaded both the 1.1 version and 0.4 version for Explorer and placed both in the root Library/Internet Plug-in folder.

Now Explorer works with 0.4. Camino works fine with 1.1. Unfortunately, Safari ignores 1.1 and uses the 0.4 plug in (with fewer features). Any solution?

By the way, I was able to get Explorer to use the 1.0 plug-in by just opening the prefs and going to the helpers/mime panel and clicking OK. This was a bit of a hassle, each time I launched Explorer. I have not yet tried this with version 1.1

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: nmhansen on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 4:31AM PST

Heh, this always annoyed me.

This is probably the best tip for me in the past few weeks.

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"It makes me feel powerful"

Where is Apple
Authored by: gaspode on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 5:58AM PST

Wonder why Apple never bundled a PDF plugin with OS X?

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: toontra on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 8:52AM PST

Brilliant, No more accumulated PDF's downloaded for no good reason and left there for even less reason!

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: merlyn on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 10:12AM PST

Wow. Too cool! I downloaded both, so all three of my normal browsers have the extra power.

I now find myself going to google and typing random keywords with "inurl:pdf" at the end of the search, just to prefer PDFs. Woo hoo!

Resolution/aliasing problems?
Authored by: notmatt on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 10:48AM PST

I tried this back when the original hint ran, and found that the display was nowhere near as clear as simply using Acrobat. In case anyone asks, I compared head-to-head, just to make sure it wasn't the documents I was viewing. Has this changed recently? Or was it some odd system setting I was missing?

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: ChiefTypist on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 12:42PM PST

There's only one problem with the plug-in -- you can't search for text in the file (helpful when looking for method names, APIs, etc. in documentation.)

I e-mailed the author and he's unable to implement this since Quartz does not provide an API for searching the PDF.

I filed a bug report .. hopefully someone at Apple will look into it.

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: Mithrandir on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 2:26PM PST

I've been using this for some time now and also forgot it was not a built in feature. With the addition of some new menu commands and the right click context menu (which I think is new) this is a for sure keeper. No memory leaks either! It's nice to stumble across such a good, solid and useful piece of code.

Please keep expanding its functionality. We want more...

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Josh

Ultimate Art Gallery
http://UltimateArtGallery.com

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: merlyn on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 4:28PM PST

right click context menu

Right-click? right-click? Hey, this is a mac! One-button, please!

{grin}

[ Reply to This | # ]

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: Mithrandir on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 8:22PM PST

Oh your gonna love this! Not only do I have a multi button mouse (because they are better) but it has a really bad word printed on it.

I think you can guess what word it is...

Hey it's just a mouse right? It works really good even after I scratched the bad word off...

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Josh

Ultimate Art Gallery
http://UltimateArtGallery.com

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: lrivers on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 3:23PM PST

And just to be clear you CAN save PDFs using the plug-in, very easily.

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: robg on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 4:02PM PST

Good point; I should have included that in the list of options in the drop-down menu...

-rob.

Save with a Right Click
Authored by: Mithrandir on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 8:24PM PST

Yeah it's just one right click away... he he he...

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Josh

Ultimate Art Gallery
http://UltimateArtGallery.com

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: aranor on Tue, Mar 25 2003 at 11:42PM PST

Oh wow. I just checked what version I'm using, and I still have 0.3.1 installed! I didn't realize it was updated, as that version was working fine for me. But 1.1 should probably work even better.

I've been using this PDF plugin since even before the hint about it. It rocks.

PDF Browser Plug-In - View PDFs in your browser
Authored by: prodok on Thu, Mar 27 2003 at 9:07AM PST

This is a very nice plug-in for what it does.

HOWEVER, it is limited to DISPLAY PDFs, and nothing else. This means that all functionality you have with a PDF (search, links, form fields etc.) are NOT available. In particular, this plug-in is not suitable for filling out PDF forms on-line. It is also not suitable for on-line Commenting (if you have Acrobat, the full version, you know what is meant here).

I do not know how this situation will improve within the next few months, considering the already mentioned announcement of a new Acrobat version. Considering the way Adobe treats Mac clustomers, there might not be much of a change. We will see...

Max Wyss.

not working in Firefox for me
Authored by: ash_ag on Thu, Sep 20 2007 at 6:05PM PDT

Works in Safari. Not working in Firefox. I disabled any default action on PDFs but that did not help. Firefox still asks what to do with the file, either save or open.

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