Firefox 5 still can't view pdfs in-browser??? (Mac)

[GMX2000]

Wasn't in-browser pdf-viewing support supposed to be one of the much-anticipated features of Firefox 5? I just updated and...nope. Still forces me to download them. Applications tab of preferences only offers "always ask" or "use preview".

Any way at all to fix this? I am a college student who continuously must read pdfs of research reports and I cannot keep having to download every single one I find or my productivity will go down the toilet. (having to download, open, read, drag to trash, go back to browser, etc. It also means I can't have multiple pdfs open in separate tabs)

[DanRaisch]

What reader plug-in are you using to view PDF's? See if there is a setting in that application you need to change to view PDF files in the browser. In Adobe Reader X it's under the "Internet" category.

[James]

pdf.js was not anywhere ready to be in Firefox yet. You may have seen some article what was discussing ideas, guesses or a early list of features for 5.0 back in April or earlier.

http://andreasgal.com/2011/06/15/pdf-js/

Nothing about pdf is mentioned for any version at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking

[GMX2000]

What reader plug-in are you using to view PDF's? See if there is a setting in that application you need to change to view PDF files in the browser. In Adobe Reader X it's under the "Internet" category.

Sorry! I forgot to mention I've been using "Firefox PDF plugin for Mac OS X". But I just downloaded Adobe Reader X, and when I go to the internet tab everything is checked but it says "Display PDF in browser using: /Applications/Adobe Reader.app". So when I click on a pdf, it still downloads it to my desktop, but then opens in Adobe Reader.

pdf.js was not anywhere ready to be in Firefox yet. You may have seen some article what was discussing ideas, guesses or a early list of features for 5.0 back in April or earlier.

http://andreasgal.com/2011/06/15/pdf-js/

Nothing about pdf is mentioned for any version at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking

I guess you're right, it wasn't mentioned anywhere by Mozilla. But doesn't it seem like a "duh" kind of thing to include? Yet according to the last link you posted, it's not even planned through Firefox 7! There's got to be some way to implement it besides the pdf.js thing you mentioned, because the Firefox PDF plugin for Mac OSX worked perfectly UNTIL Firefox 4. If some amateur developer can do it, why can't mozilla, the ones developing the browser itself? Supposedly it can be done in both IE and Chrome...though afaik neither have any equivalents of the other extensions I use all the time that still happen to work past 3.6.x.

I guess, though, rather than just to berate Mozilla, my main reason for posting this is to find out whether there is ANY way to get around this and be able to view PDFs in-browser on Mac OSX. Or, if not, HOW do I roll back to FF3.6.x so I can just keep using the plugin I mentioned above?

[Udo Pracht]

I totally subscribe to the urge of having some possibility to view PDFs within the browser window...

[Gingerbread Man]

• Some have suggested the Schubert|it PDF Browser Plugin as an alternative.
• Others suggest Google Docs Viewer.
• According to some of the reviews, PDF Plugin for Firefox on Mac OS X works fine in Firefox 4 and 5 (32-bit only). To force it to install, either see Editing an add-on to change its compatibility or just install Add-on Compatibility Reporter.

[RobertJ]

According to some of the reviews, PDF Plugin for Firefox on Mac OS X works fine in Firefox 4 and 5 (32-bit only).

I believe this is correct. If you want to try it use Get Info on the FF app with FF not running. Check "Open in 32 bit mode". This should have no/little impact on performance since the major difference between 32 bit and 64 bit is the memory address space, 4G versus 64G. Note that the OSX kernel booted into 32 bit mode until late 2010 on HW sold. Even with the kernel now booting into 64 bit mode by default on current HW, it will be quite a while until many apps take advantage of this. The reason is that only highly computing intensive apps like video editing really need it.

.

[Guest]

View PDFs in Firefox 5 Web Browsers

Jun 24, '11 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: alexiskai

To date, people who wanted to view downloaded PDFs on a Mac have had three options:

• Use Safari's in-line PDF viewer plug-in to view PDFs in Safari.
• Use Firefox v3 and the Firefox PDF plug-in for Mac to view PDFs in Firefox.
• Use a current version of Firefox, download the PDFs, and view them in a PDF reader app.

That's right -- there was no way to view PDFs in Firefox 4 or 5 as one could do in Safari, because the Firefox PDF plug-in didn't work above Firefox 3.6.

That is, it didn't officially work. But it turns out that with some simple modifications, you can get this plug-in to work just fine in Firefox 5 and probably future versions of Firefox, thus allowing you to view PDFs in the browser once again.

• With the Applications folder open in Finder, do a Get Info on Firefox.
• Check the box for 'Open in 32-bit mode.'
• If Firefox is currently open, quit and relaunch it.
• Download the Firefox PDF Plug-in for Mac (this is the beta 1.2 plug-in; the official 1.1.3 plug-in doesn't work with this procedure).
• When prompted, Save the downloaded file.
• You should get a file called fx-quartz-pdf-1.2.0.xpi in your Downloads folder. Double-click it to decompress it.
• Inside the resulting folder, you'll see 'install.rdf.' Open this file in TextEdit or vi or another simple text editor.
• Look for a line reading '<em:maxVersion>4.0.*</em:maxVersion>'.
• Change that 4 to 20. (Or you could change it to 5, but since Firefox is going to go through version numbers pretty quickly, you should pick one pretty far out.)
• Save and exit.
• Select all the files in the fx-quartz-pdf-1.2.0 folder, right-click on them, and select 'Compress 6 items.' Do NOT compress the containing folder or it won't work later on.
• Now you'll have a file called Archive.zip. Rename this file fx-quartz-pdf-1.2.0.xpi.
• In Firefox, go to the Tools menu and select Add-Ons.
• At the top of the window, look for the button with the gear icon. Click this and select 'Install Add-On from File.'
• Browse to and select the fx-quartz-pdf-1.2.0.xpi file you created.
• Approve the add-on installation when prompted.

Now this may work fine for some of you and you may be done. Test the add-on by attempting to open an online PDF. If it opens in the browser, great, you're done. But in my case, more work was required, because Firefox claimed that the add-on was installed, but it wasn't actually working. So I had to do some additional clean-up.

• Quit Firefox.
• Open ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/[random_characters].default/extensions/.
• You should see a file called colesbury@gmail.com.xpi. It's the compressed file we created earlier, but with a different name. I think this is why it's not working. If you see a folder called colesbury@gmail.com instead, you have some other problem.
• Go up one level to the [gibberish].default folder. You should see a file called extensions.ini. Open this file in your text editor.
• Look for an entry that ends with colesbury@gmail.com.xpi.
• Remove the '.xpi' extension.
• Save and exit.
• Back in the extensions folder, double-click on colesbury@gmail.com.xpi. This should expand it into a folder named colesbury@gmail.com. If necessary, delete the previous .xpi file.
• Launch Firefox 5. It should properly display PDFs in the browser now.

[OldF**t]

The PDF Plugin for Firefox on Mac OSX does work in FF5. First you need the latest version of the extension located at: http://firefox-mac-pdf.s3.amazonaws.com ... -1.2.0.xpi . This is a newer version than the one on the Mozilla add-ons site. Second you need the add-on compatibility reporter extension. Third you need to run FF5 in 32bit mode. FF4 and FF5 will open pdfs with these mods.

[Guest]

Hold the presses! A new Schubert PDF Browser Plugin 2.4.1 was just released earlier today. 64-bit, Firefox support, mouse wheel support in Safari. But Snow Leopard only; no plain-vanilla Leopard. Grrrrr!

[RobertJ]

Hold the presses! A new Schubert PDF Browser Plugin 2.4.1 was just released earlier today. 64-bit, Firefox support, mouse wheel support in Safari. But Snow Leopard only; no plain-vanilla Leopard. Grrrrr!

Thanks for the info. Just loaded it. Needed to manually uninstall the old one first and had to install from the internal package pdfBrowserPlugin.pkg found here

/Volumes/PDF Browser Plugin/PDF Browser Plugin.mpkg/Contents/Packages/pdfBrowserPlugin.pkg

to get it to install properly. However once done I now have an in browser viewer again

.

[GMX2000]

Hold the presses! A new Schubert PDF Browser Plugin 2.4.1 was just released earlier today. 64-bit, Firefox support, mouse wheel support in Safari. But Snow Leopard only; no plain-vanilla Leopard. Grrrrr!

WOW! It works! The extension for some reason doesn't allow selection of text (e.g. for copy+pasting) while viewing in-browser but...I'll take it if it means I can at least view pdfs in-browsers! (and who knows, maybe selecting text will be a feature added in a future version)

Tyvm for posting the link!

[GMX2000]

...and, thanks to the other posters as well! I do appreciate your taking the time to reply.

(sorry for the double post, being a guest I can't edit anything)

[foxystyle]

I installed the schubert pdf viewer and it works but it opens pdfs in the same tab rather than in a new one. Is there any one to get pdfs to open in a new tab using this plug-in?

[RobertJ]

I installed the schubert pdf viewer and it works but it opens pdfs in the same tab rather than in a new one. Is there any one to get pdfs to open in a new tab using this plug-in?

Hold down the command key while clicking on the pdf link.