June 17, 2010

Built-in PDF Reader for Google Chrome

Chromium's blog announced that the latest Google Chrome dev build for Windows and Mac includes a plug-in for viewing PDF files. The plug-in can be enabled by going to chrome://plugins/ and clicking on "Enable" for the "Chrome PDF Viewer" plug-in.

When you click on a link to a PDF file, Chrome no longer opens the file using the Adobe Reader plug-in. Instead, Google Chrome uses a basic PDF viewer that lacks many useful features like pagination and bookmarks.


"PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML web pages, and basic interactions will be no different than the same interactions with web pages (for example, zooming and searching will work as users expect). PDF rendering quality is still a work in progress, and we will improve it substantially before releasing it to the beta and stable channels. To further protect users, PDF functionality will be contained within the security sandbox Chrome uses for web page rendering. Users will automatically receive the latest version of Chrome's PDF support; they won't have to worry about manually updating any plug-ins or programs," explains Google.

This is especially useful for Chrome OS users, who won't be able to install PDF viewers like Adobe Reader or Evince. Instead of relying on Google Docs Viewer, Chrome will be able to display PDF files faster, especially if they're saved locally.

{ Thanks, Arpit. }

125 comments:

  1. Needs more UI,
    The pages render fine, but switching to specific pages is impossible, unless you ctrl+f them,
    and there are no next and previous page buttons,
    zoom requires knowing chromes keyboard shortcuts,
    and while the actual changes are better, since we don't have to rely on adobe, they still need improvements on the user end.

    ReplyDelete
  2. At least the performance is good.
    But I want some useful features like Adobe reader does. like bookmarks and link.

    ReplyDelete
  3. this is quite awesome. i hate having to load a pdf reader after clicking on a pdf file (usually not realizing it's a pdf file too)

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  4. I would rather some way to view local PDFs with the Google Docs viewer at http://docs.google.com/viewer

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  5. I like the idea of having built-in PDF viewing in Chrome, as long as Google or Adobe are up to date in updating the reader. I remember when Google released Chrome with integrated Flash, but Adobe had released a new version of Flash 10.1 RC and Chrome was still using for a few days the previous RC release.

    A little off-topic, but I like how Chrome 6 will look like.

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  6. I view PDF bills with online banking - the new plugin doesn't let me *save* the PDF to my local disk for archiving.

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  7. Right Click > Save as...

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  8. Which only saves HTML, not the PDF itself. The plain ability to save the PDF you're looking at is highly desirable.

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  9. Most times, I am able to save the PDF file, but sometimes the way the page is coded makes it impossible to save the PDF file, especially when I'm searching academic databases for full-texts. I am forced to use IE for this...

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  10. Good one but lacks functionality ... can't save the pdf document major drawback ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Try hovering over bottom right corner. Tools appear with save, zoom, print, full page, page width.

      Delete
  11. Although a lot of posts claim this will be part of Chromium, the Chrome PDF plugin is proprietary closed-source and will stay that way.

    http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=50852#c16

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  12. Inability to save really breaks this.

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  13. Try Ctrl+S or "Save file as" in the wrench menu.

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  14. Problems with cut/paste.

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  15. completely useless as far as I can tell. Perhaps there's a glitch today, but either I see nothing at all, or I cannot scroll down to see pages without reducing the size of the page image to microscopic text. Odd.

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  16. really stupid design, cannot save the pdf file at all, hey google engineers, what made you think that users don't want to save their pdf.

    and probably we all shouldn't be BETA testing for your endless software updates (aka bug fixes) and not giving us a TRULY workable product.

    Come on, i'm sure you are better than this!

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  17. well, you can save the pdf if you temporarily disable the "Chrome PDF Viewer" plugin on the about:plugins page, but of course a better solution is needed

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  18. I just sent a mass email to a bunch of people complaining that their website wasn't allowing me to save the pdf anymore, and it use to let me save, and this is a step backwards and blah blah balh... now I've found out that it isn't the website's fault at all. It's this damn chrome add-on that has quietly installed itself without telling me and then disabled my ability to save pdfs. ...

    I like the idea of having a pdf viewer built into chrome, but it is vitally important that it lets us save (and print) pdfs that are built into webpages.

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  19. Dying without the ability to save files to my computer.

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  20. no save.... just make nonsense...

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  21. And the ability to search in PDFs is pretty important too. I had to revert to the stable version of Chrome just so I could search.

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  22. To get around the absence of "Save as" I can go back up one level and use "save link as...". But I seriously miss the navigation/bookmark. How can I go to a particular section now? I also miss the ability to email the PDF document while reading it. (Nice job integrating the search, though)

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  23. just found that you can use ctrl-s to save the pdf file right within the viewer.

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  24. I didn't have any issues saving the PDF files (Chrome treats the page as a PDF file so ctrl-S saves a pdf and print seems to work the same as before with a page choice, so it seems to have simple functionality for most uses.

    On another note, I very much prefer the layout over the old one as it has 'real' full screen mode and is a much smoother/faster system over adobe's in browser system. It's also a lot easier to read/explore

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  25. To add more detail, the right click "save as" works if it is a simple PDF. However, there is no easy way to save if it is a frame window, one frame for some sort of banner (many websites for scientific journals do it this way) and one for the actual PDF. When that happends the "save as" right click menu is replaced with the frame context menu. As far as I can tell there is no way around this (other than firefox).

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  26. Blah blah, it never ceases to amaze me that people who can think their way through coding complex software packages, can't think their way through what a user might want to do with it. How annoying!

    When it works, it will be great. Adobe reader is a bloated POS that really makes me miss my old Mac. But for now I'll have to stick with it.

    ReplyDelete
  27. The "save as" when right click dissapears in pages with frames. One Workaround is to right-click and select to open the frame in a new tab or window. The pdf will load again but the "save as" option will be there. Annoying but it works

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  28. After waiting long enough for this (the save issue) to get fixed, I gave up and went back to the slower but reliable Adobe by going to about:plugins page, disabled "Chrome PDF Viewer" and re-enabled the Adobe PDF Plug-in.

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  29. This is real bull. I want my browser to be able to plug in Adobe PDF reader and other softwares too. So if open means blocking others, please walk out dear chrome developpers and stop joking.

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  30. @Dirk:

    You can still use Adobe Reader's plug-in. Just type about:plugins in the address bar and disable the built-in PDF plug-in.

    Google's plug-in is licensed from Foxit and the main advantage is that it's sandboxed, so that the security vulnerabilities stay inside the browser and don't affect other programs. As you probably know, Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash are the most insecure programs you can install on a computer.

    "According to ScanSafe of San Bruno, Calif., vulnerabilities in Adobe's Reader and Acrobat applications were the most frequently targeted of any software during 2009, with hackers' PDF exploits growing throughout the year.

    "In the first quarter of 2009, malicious PDF files made up 56% of all exploits tracked by ScanSafe. That figure climbed above 60% in the second quarter, over 70% in the third and finished at 80% in the fourth quarter." (ComputerWorld)

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  31. Very annoying that you can't select text in the new PDF viewer

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  32. you can select text and ctrl-s save as pdf file. (8.0.552.210 beta)

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  33. I like the minimal appearance. But the SAVE issue is really bothering me. Most of the scientific journals or databases don't give you a direct link to download pdfs. There is always a Frame.

    You can open the pdf frame in a new tab and then ctrl + s...

    I'm still waiting for it to be fixed. I don't think it takes long to implement that! .. perhaps 10 minutes! ... So I'm wondering why on earth they haven't done it by now.. It's been 6 months..

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  34. same here. can't use it because cannot save.

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  35. Save it as all files and rename the extension to PDF. in my case, the default save name has jsp as the extension, but when i renamed it to pdf, it worked. Correctly opened in Foxit. Well, it should automatically set the extension to PDF i suppose, and give the option in the file type drop down too. TBH, this is not the final build. They might come in the coming builds.

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  36. Also missing the print lcon, I know ctrl+P does it but its knida long winded, and if you are not that up on windows shortcuts then you wont know where to start...just like many of my users?
    Should have the options to enable/disable standard options this is just too basic

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  37. Printing is a feature that's rarely used, so it doesn't make sense to add a button that clutters the toolbar. There are a lot of ways to print a page:

    1. right click and select "Print"
    2. click on the wrench menu and select "Print"
    3. use Ctrl+P

    If you really want a print button, install this extension.

    ReplyDelete
  38. does anybody know how to jump to a page number? someone sent me a pdf that doesn't have page numbers in the margins, and told me to go to a particular page. this is easy to do in other viewers, but with the embedded pdf viewer, i don't know how to get to that page.

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  39. I'm having problems with saving academics papers too. Thanks to this site, I figured it's a Chrome plug-in. I kinda fiddled around in the options and apparently there's a way to disable it. for those who don't know yet, here it is:

    1. Go to Options;
    2. Under The Hood tab;
    3. at the very top: Content Settings;
    4. Under the features tree: go to Plug-ins;
    5. click on the link in blue: Disable individual plug-ins;
    6. this will open a Chrome window, you will find that the 'Adobe Reader 9:Adobe PDF Plug-In' is disabled. It's because the 'Chrome PDF Viewer' had disabled it. if you scroll down you will see 'Chrome PDF Viewer' is enabled. Go ahead and enable the Adobe Reader 9 plug-in, then u'll see the Chrome PDF viewer is disabled.
    In the future you can switch back and forth with these two plug-ins, depending on what function you wanna use.

    hope it helps, so no one needs to go back to IE just to save pdf. And sorry that i post this in this page, but having the function to saving it is HIGHLY desirable! hope Google will fix it soon

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  40. hmm..just found out you can just type:
    chrome://plugins/
    on the Google Chrome website bar
    it will just link to the same page..then you can do the disabling.
    just ignore those steps I posted earlier.

    ReplyDelete
  41. I run a SaaS product and have been promoting GC for 2 years, in one move you have hugely disappointed me. The average person doesn't know how to disable the PDF plugin (or know what a plugin is!) I got 100's of phone calls as it went to live as people couldn't see a print button... how simple is this. I know you can Ctrl+P or right click print, but the average user needs things in front of them screaming at them. Why not have a simple print button? Why make it overly complex for users?

    Jason

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  42. [quote]Printing is a feature that's rarely used, so it doesn't make sense to add a button that clutters the toolbar. There are a lot of ways to print a page:

    1. right click and select "Print"
    2. click on the wrench menu and select "Print"
    3. use Ctrl+P

    If you really want a print button, install this extension.
    [/quote]

    I complete disagree. What 'average' user knows what an extension or a plugin is... I struggle explaining what a web browser is! I think Chrome should be the browser for everyone, not just for tech-savy people. Printing is used in business, invoices, credit notes, statements, letters etc. Printing unfortunately is part of our lives, it is heavily used by those that aren't technically minded and therefore should be part of the UI. Having Ctrl+P is just not good enough.

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  43. Agreed, for viewing, Chrome's PDF viewer is fine. For more control I use Foxit Pro's free PDF reader which is quick to load and render plus it offers tools such as annotation, highlighting, and drawing on the PDF (and saving too).

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  44. I could not agree more with "Jason." We have hundreds of users in a Panic and I'm very disappointed. We too promote GC a LOT and to be so short sighted to assume that people rarely "print" is about as self centered a viewpoint as I can imagine.

    On top of everything, its absurdly confusing the way the tool "resizes" pages, and it has no use at all that I can see. Again, very short sighted!

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  45. For those of you saying that you can save with CTRL-s or right click, save as, this has not been the case for me. The file saves sure enough but when I try to open it with adobe I get an error about the file being corrupted.

    I appreciate the ideal of being lightweight and smooth and indeed it is. However, it also lacks basic functionality and what good is it then? I'd rather have the slow, and bloated adobe than a program that looks good but doesn't 'work'!

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  46. Yep, pretty much useless for academic users now. Going back to firefox (until I get tired of it again) since most of my class notes from professors and journal articles are within frames. Pointless to have to open another tab for another frame just so I can save it for later or to put them all together. Bad timing for this issue to pop up for me to, as it is exam time.

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  47. Huge fail for (1) save, (2) email and (3) printing embedded. As much as I have trouble developing cross platform for Adobe I disabled this Chrome plugin as soon as I saw it.

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  48. Yep, this viewer pretty much sucks.

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  49. Really disappointed with this, we have hundreds of clients who if using Chrome, will no longer know how to print the documents from our websites. How frustrating to click on "Print this" only for it now to open in a window that they don't know how to print from. You shot to early Google.

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  50. First thing I did was turn it off and revert to Adobe... useless, cannot print or save any more and the better handling of pdfs was why I moved from IE to Chrome

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  51. The easiest fix is just disable the Chrome PDF viewer and reenable Adobe. It only takes a few seconds. Remember to install the Adobe upgrade to fix the security hole.

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  52. Cant save to hard drive or print, the two reasons that made me disabled the plug-in and enabled the old adobe, nice try though

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  53. This is a correct way "The easiest fix is just disable the Chrome PDF viewer and reenable Adobe. It only takes a few seconds. Remember to install the Adobe upgrade to fix the security hole."

    Follow this following tip to show all pdf menus in chrome:

    1. Open "Option" menu (click Wrench icon located at the upper-right of your Chrome browser).

    2. Select "Under The Hood" tab

    3. Click "Content Settings" button under the "Privacy"

    4. Select "Plug-ins" and click "Disable individual plug-ins" (a new browser window will appear chrome://plugins/)

    5. Disable "Chrome PDF Viewer"

    6. Enable "Adobe Reader 9" (Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape "9.4.1")

    7. Close the chrome://plugins/ window and see the effect by opening a new PDF file using your Chrome browser.

    I just did it and it 100% works !

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  54. Disabled "Chrome PDF Viewer" and going back to the Foxit plugin. Adobe plugin?? Nah~ I am stil haunted with past experiences of it crashing.

    ReplyDelete
  55. what was google thinking, removing all the GUI for PDF-files?
    I'm really used to; Print, Save, Zoom and Sign.

    Now; when a PDF is inside a frame, there is no way to save it. Also right-click doesn't work...

    Just disabled the chrome pdf plugin...

    ReplyDelete
  56. Another solution: Install the "IE tab" extension and when viewing the PDF just click the "IE tab" plugin button. That will open the standard Acrobat viewer.

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  57. I absolutely have to be able to save PDFs to my computer, Ctrl+S. I love the PDF viewer but without a Print or Save it's worthless to me. I <3 Chrome but I'll have to disable this until the basic functionality is in place.

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  58. what about viewing 3D pdf ? I get a message "enable 3D View" but it's impossible to know how ?!

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  59. Ditto to many others, need to be able to save PDFs to my Computer (ala ctrl+s).

    The viewer is great, but this kills the usage for me...had to disable it.

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  60. I found the easy way to save PDF from chrome. You just have to save the file to a different name than it is in the browser. So when you get the Save As... dialog you just have to change the name of the file a little bit and it will save :)

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  61. "Most times, I am able to save the PDF file, but sometimes the way the page is coded makes it impossible to save the PDF file, especially when I'm searching academic databases for full-texts. I am forced to use IE for this..."


    THIS. IT SUCKS. I can't save more than half the time because it tries to save as html. Then I have to open another browser all over again and find the file and it's a HUGE pain in the butt. Chrome is better than other browsers, but this makes me want to go back to Firefox... or even IE!

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  62. Agree with Harald and Anonymous on the save problem (esp. with financial transactions and statements - Ctrl-S just offers to save the HTML wrapper!). As a lightweight, speedy viewer, it IS nice, but to make it the default without offering right-click alternatives is a big NO!

    ReplyDelete
  63. To save problematic pdf sites, right click, Open Frame in New Tab, right click in the new tab and Save.

    This was very frustrating until I read the comments above and found this shortcut. I actually like the speedy and uncluttered way of viewing pdfs, plus Adobe is really buggy and crashes web browsers too often.

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  64. I hate this, this is inconvenient and doesn't make the pdf look any better than it did before.

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  65. HAVE A LOOK HERE PEOPLE....
    http://bitsonline.org/technology-blog-bits/43-news/105-disabling-google-chrome-in-built-pdf-reader

    ReplyDelete
  66. I can save to .pdf if i right click > save as. Don't understand what you are talking about.

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  67. Plug-in disabled...

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  68. I would like to be able to see the total number of pages in the PDF file and the number of the page I'm currently viewing! A toolbar, containing the buttons to print, save, zoom in/out, etc., would be nice.

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  69. "Printing is a feature that's rarely used" = false.

    The suggested alternatives for printing a PDF assume that the PDF will be consuming the entire page...it's quite common to embed a PDF inside an iframe or embed tag...what then...I can't seem to see any way of printing in that case.

    Also, sucks to me a Linux user who doesn't even get the option to fall back to Adobe PDF Viewer.

    The development team here just wrestled with the users to get them to switch to Chrome and now this buggy PDF viewer severely hurts our case.

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  70. Need this to support deep linking parameters such as page=n etc. and OpenActions. See:
    http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/PDFOpenParameters.pdf#page=5

    ReplyDelete
  71. When i save any pdf to my comp thru this plugin ..... it often doesnt get opened in adobe reader or even other readers. seems that there is some problem with the plugin. while non plugin browsers work fine for those same pdfs like IE or firefox

    ReplyDelete
  72. I'll add one more voice to the "needs to save" comments. I can take or leave printing (though there are some compelling arguments to add a print button), but when I need to save a pdf in a frame, it is very frustrating to have to go through the workaround just to save it.

    ReplyDelete
  73. Every pdf can still be saved even with the safer and faster chrome viewer by opening the pdf in a new Tab and pressing ctrl-s. This saving stuff only works when the pdf is the only thing viewed in that particular tab.

    If the upper thing did not work for you this will most likely resolve your problem. Go to chrome://plugins and turn on the adobe pdf viewer 9, which will also turn off chrome pdf viewer.

    ReplyDelete
  74. good dog google. I like you guys a lot, and will continue to use chrome, but omg bro no save in a PDF viewer?? how can I use this?

    ReplyDelete
  75. The saving option is HUGE and has been overlooked. I like the fact that I can quickly access the PDF however at time I want to save a copy and for now I've been using a different browser to accomplish the same task which is a nuisance.

    ReplyDelete
  76. the "find" function is not working when the webpage itself divides itself to 2 frames - 1 regular , 1 pdf open.

    and you still can't pick the background color, and it sucks

    this pdf reader was a bad Idea, I have to switch to firefox to work with pdfs... sad ):

    ReplyDelete
  77. PDF file can be SAVED in google pdf plugin. but google engineers are the foolest persons i ever felt. Reason is "Whenever we click "savce page as" option it again downloads the same pdf file from internet. So, if people loads a pdf in browser and goes offline cannot save the pdf. and also Already the pdf file is downloaded by chrome while we are viewing it, Why are they again downloading it?? just saving the pdf from cache is the easiest and wise option. Google should fire the engineer who designed this plugin.

    ReplyDelete
  78. They should have added an option to "save" on the GUI, but "ctr + s" works just fine. Try it!

    ReplyDelete
  79. Chrome is no browser. It's a tool for datamining.

    ReplyDelete
  80. This problem is also discussed here http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=01159afedde60d2c&hl=en

    The "frames" solution doesn't work on certain sites -- e.g., PACER. I can't find any way to save a PACER PDF other than disabling the plugin.

    "Print to" seems to lose OCR, another problem.

    There really needs to be a "save original PDF" option for PDFs rendered in Chrome.

    ReplyDelete
  81. not at all useful... u can't do anything but open PDF!!!

    ReplyDelete
  82. I don't understand. You can right button on the pdf window, then "save as", and it will save as a pdf.

    ReplyDelete
  83. Simply go to chrome://plugins/ and disable "Chrome PDF Viewer" plugin to have it use the Adobe plugin instead.

    ReplyDelete
  84. 1/18/11 6:33pm anonymous: the problem is many PDFs are served not as a link. For example, you might get a PDF in response to submitting a form. In that case, right-click "save as" is not an option.

    1/19/11 12:01pm anonymous: yes, of course you can disable the plugin, but it's unfortunate to have to forego what is otherwise a useful Chrome feature (particularly for its better integration into Chrome UI than third-party viewers).

    ReplyDelete
  85. Adrian said...
    I'm having problems with saving academics papers too. Thanks to this site, I figured it's a Chrome plug-in. I kinda fiddled around in the options and apparently there's a way to disable it. for those who don't know yet, here it is:

    1. Go to Options;
    2. Under The Hood tab;
    3. at the very top: Content Settings;
    4. Under the features tree: go to Plug-ins;
    5. click on the link in blue: Disable individual plug-ins;
    6. this will open a Chrome window, you will find that the 'Adobe Reader 9:Adobe PDF Plug-In' is disabled. It's because the 'Chrome PDF Viewer' had disabled it. if you scroll down you will see 'Chrome PDF Viewer' is enabled. Go ahead and enable the Adobe Reader 9 plug-in, then u'll see the Chrome PDF viewer is disabled.
    In the future you can switch back and forth with these two plug-ins, depending on what function you wanna use.

    hope it helps, so no one needs to go back to IE just to save pdf. And sorry that i post this in this page, but having the function to saving it is HIGHLY desirable! hope Google will fix it soon

    December 4, 2010 3:18 PM
    Adrian said...
    hmm..just found out you can just type:
    chrome://plugins/
    on the Google Chrome website bar
    it will just link to the same page..then you can do the disabling.
    just ignore those steps I posted earlier.



    PURE UTTER GENIUS

    Thanks Adrian.

    ReplyDelete
  86. I can't save my electronic bank statement. That's a major down side for me. As a result, I have disabled the plug in =(

    ReplyDelete
  87. The PDF viewer does seem faster, but *PLEASE*, *PLEASE*, *PLEASE* bring back the "save" (as PDF) and "print" buttons!

    Especially the "save" issue in frames is very annoying, but the less technical users in my organization are also very confused by the lack of the "print" button.

    ReplyDelete
  88. I also disabled the plugin, has lots of bugs, all pdf files saved are corrupted. Really disapointed GOOGLE Chrome!

    ReplyDelete
  89. I am also disappointed to say that the PDF doesn't save properly and when even if it saves and when I open it with some PDF viewer like Adobe Reader or Preview(in Mac) it says the file is "corrupted".

    ReplyDelete
  90. When in viewer, right click on PDF file, choose "open frame in new tab", go to that tab, right click and voilá - "save as" comes up. Now you can save in PDF format.
    Google engineers: work around this bug! We know you can do it!

    ReplyDelete
  91. @David:

    The missing feature was added to Chrome 10. You can install Chrome Dev Channel or wait until beta/stable builds are available.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Wow. I finally came across this so-called "feature" and it is almost as bad as iTunes.

    I disabled all my PDF reading plugins, which used to make it DOWNLOAD them, but now I just get a white page with an inset border.

    How does a company release such an utter piece of shit? Does Google have no standards? Or do they just want to be total fuckwads like Apple?

    Also, is this posting? All I'm getting is my comment back with a red splotch.

    ReplyDelete
  93. @atomic1fire: shortcuts like ctrl++, ctrl+-, ctrl+scrollwheel are standard in all (major) browsers. they're supported by chrome, firefox, opera, IE, and probably safari. Ctrl+scrollwheel is supported by most programs that have a zoom functions (word processors, document viewers, picture editors and viewers, etc). Many computer games (and other programs such as google maps) with overhead maps use the scroll wheel alone to zoom in and out.
    in short, ctrl++, ctrl+-, ctrl+scroll are as universal as ctrl+f; they aren't "chrome shortcut keys".

    ReplyDelete
  94. Had to disable this plugin because I can't save pdfs that are loaded in a frame.

    ReplyDelete
  95. thank god for this plugin. it speeds up pdf viewing a million times. it kind of activated itself alone though, i can't remember exactly when i started seeing this, maybe 1 or 2 months ago.
    again, it's excellent.

    ReplyDelete
  96. The solution is disable this plugin and wait google delivers a better version. Without the basic tools it sucks ...

    ReplyDelete
  97. went too far with the minimization, can't even turn the pages. not a fan

    ReplyDelete
  98. No indication if a document is PDF/a or not. This is an important deficiency.

    ReplyDelete
  99. Seems like Google would have enough money to do a user focus group? So many people here are saying the exact same things. People won't adopt this unless it 'just works'(I personally hate that phrase, it's a bunch of weasel words), and since Adobe has dominated this for most users, that means it needs to 'just work' in a way that people are used to. The bar for functionality has already been set, I feel that they are using actual users as a test group, which is very bad form.

    Most users do not know or care what a PDF plug-in viewer is, and they honestly shouldn't need to know or care. To me Google has just saved their budget in user interface testing by passing that cost on to the IT help-desk of any businesses unfortunate enough to try and push this out enterprise wide as a default browser.

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  100. The save function needs to be reinstated. Please hurry that along.

    ReplyDelete
  101. the good news - 10 million people realize how stupid this is. the bad news - none of them seem to work at google. i mean who possibly thought this was a good idea? "hey, let's take over the PDF function for our customers without asking, and then remove all of the functionality!"

    ReplyDelete
  102. here's a solution:

    http://simplemrturtle.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-save-pdf-files-in-google-chrome.html

    ReplyDelete
  103. Without print and save buttons it is not minimisation, just a rip-off version.

    I couldn't believe that Google makes downloading papers from IEEE this complicated.

    ReplyDelete
  104. the pdf plugin is a waste of time. it is astonishing Google doesn't improve this miserable viewer. I like Chrome so much I sometimes forget to switch to Safari when I use a website that charges me for PDF documents, and I end of having to pay twice, switching over to Safari so I can actually keep the file on display. gak. foo.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Everyone should be aware this is fixed in recent releases.

    ReplyDelete
  106. I think chrome PDF plugins is quite good, it's just need to add some "important spice" to be real good, that is, bookmarks and ability to save to disk or cache or google docs or something. Hope the developers and google itself listen to this, otherwise the dream of ChromeOS will be a crippled one.

    ReplyDelete
  107. Chrome pdf-viewer has been my default for some time now... But now I stumbled on the issue with pdf's shown in frames; they cannot be saved, printed, searched, nada... Big thing for me actually... And the "Open frame in new tab" does not work for framed pdf. Please, Google, can you get me only that little piece of functionality, please...

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  108. Google is going downhill with this PDF problem -- I have a tedious work-around, but when that quits working then Chrome will be off my system....

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  109. webduko1 says... how dare you branch out creating new idea's and leave unsolved problems in your wake. you are going to have a "fibber Mcgee closet' for the rest of us to stumble over.

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  110. The viewer is still missing a rotate option. Not all PDF's are oriented upright (I know, they should be, but they aren't). The latest version of Chrome will not allow you to print a web page without the Chrome viewer installed and active. So for those who have auto-update turned on but use the Adobe viewer, you will have to enable the Chrome PDF viewer every time you want to print. I don't expect that much from Microsoft, but I do from Google. These issues are disappointing.

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  111. New user of Chrome. I have used Firefox for years but it is getting terribly sluggish. Trying out chrome but even with Chrome PDF turned on it opens the pdf in Adobe and will not open it without first downloading and saving in the downloads directory. Firefox never downloaded, just opened even when using Adobe. What gives?

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  112. Type about:plugins in the address bar, press enter and make sure that "Chrome PDF Viewer" is enabled and "Adobe Acrobat" is disabled. To test if Chrome's PDF Viewer actually works, copy this URL in the address bar:
    http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

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  113. OK with Chrome enabled, that page opens nicely in a Chrome PDF window. With Foxit enabled, it opens nicely in a Foxit PDF window. So my question is, why when I am viewing a Yahoo mail message with PDF attached, does Chrome insist on downloading it first whereas Firefox just opens it with the Adobe Addon?

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  114. @Ian:

    Because Yahoo Mail sends a HTTP header that asks the browser to download the file. You click the "download" button, so you're supposed to download the file. I tried clicking the "download" button next to a PDF attachment and the file was downloaded, irrespective of the PDF plug-in that was enabled (Google's PDF viewer and Adobe Reader). Gmail solves this problem by adding a "view" link next to the attachment that opens it in Google Docs Viewer (or in Chrome's PDF viewer).

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  115. Still - Firefox will open a yahoo PDF attachment without downloading. Why won't Chrome. This is annoying as I have to go and delete it from my download folder or end up with a load of junk that I don't want.

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  116. @Ian:

    Now I understand your point. Chrome is probably the only browser that doesn't offer the option to open a file without saving it to the download folder. Firefox and other browsers let you open a file directly, but you should know that the file is actually downloaded and saved to a temporary folder.

    The explanation why Chrome doesn't offer this feature is that downloading files in Chrome is extremely simple: there's no dialog that asks you if you really want to download a file (unless you're downloading a potentially malicious file). Adding the option to "open" the file means that Chrome would have to ask users every time they download a file and that's annoying.

    There's an old bug about this in Chrome's public bug tracker and you could star it. Google promised to add this feature at some point, but it probably has a low priority.

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  117. Actually the Firefox way is far less annoying. Simply double click and it opens, I assumed it was saved in a temp file but then it is immediately deleted. With Chrome I have to delete it. If I open the same file several different times, I have several copies of it. This is just plain dumb.

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  118. Read the old bug, very old bug. I think it's time for a logical fix. I for one find this to be extremely agrivating and a simple solution would be an item requesting where to save or save and delete (which of course would save it to temp, run it and then logically get rid of it. If I wanted to save it I would specifically ask it to. Normally I only want to view and I think most people feel the same way.

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  119. I like the plugin except for one thing.... I want to be able to save the PDF file without downloading it again.
    It really really irks me when I have just downloaded a large PDF file, and when I say "save" it downloads again.
    Bandwidth here in SA is still slow, unreliable and expensive.

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  120. XXXXXX.pdf#page=n is off by one. It goes to the page index rather than the page number.

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