I was waiting for someone to develop an in-line PDF plugin for Firefox on Mac OS X, and finally it's here:

http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/

A while back there was an older plugin that only worked on PPC Macs on older Firefox versions, but this one is designed for Firefox 3, and works great on my Macbook Pro. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but it gets the job done.

It's been out for a couple months now, but I figured I'd post here in case someone hadn't stumbled on it yet.

yea! thanks!

Interesting, I'll have to give it a try. For the most part, I prefer to download the file and view it in Foxit because I prefer the application.

I had no idea Google had a service like this. Cool! Is this like a "Google-forge"?

The only reason I can see to want an inline PDF viewer is to start viewing the beginning of the file before the download is done or, generally, to utilize partial downloads. Does this extension do that?

Very interesting, Tony. I was *just* wondering about this last night. Thanks!

It doesn't appear to. Maybe that's something they can add.

My main reason for wanting it was to avoid cluttering my Firefox downloads directory with PDFs that I often only want to view once. Also, it's easier for me to keep track of several PDF documents in browser tabs than it is to be constantly switching Preview.app windows.

Fair enough.

Is that another MS Windows-only thing? On Linux, the temporary PDF vanishes when the viewer is closed.

Cheers

Unfortunately, it seems to be a MacOSX-only thing.

Yeah, it's Mac OS only. Windows has had inline PDF viewing all along (with the right plugins anyway). I find it very odd that Mac OS hasn't had this built-in from the beginning.

On the other hand, I think the way Windows does it is to just drop the file in your TEMP directory and let it occupy space. At least on the Mac, you see it appear somewhere you'd tend to look (the same place all your important downloads go; the desktop in my case), so you've got a better chance of cleaning it up.

Now I'm not sure which is better!

Mac OS does have built in inline PDF reading for any browser that uses Webkit (Safari, etc), or really any program that uses standard OS X APIs. Firefox has never really been a proper OS X application, so in this particular case Firefox on OS X doesn't support inline PDF.

OS X also has temp folders, so the decision of where to dump files is up to Firefox too, and not the OS.

Firefox 3 at least seems to be making a minor attempt at feeling more like a native OS X app, but it still has a ways to go. I still haven't seen a must have feature in Firefox to make me want to switch away from Safari. And yes, I have addons for Safari to do ad blocking and such.