The macosxhints Rating:
[0 to 10 lights; 10 = perfect!]
- Developer: Schubert it / [Product Page]
- Price: $0 [freeware]
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.

