socialrosiechen: Google sneaks internal PDF reader into Chrome dev channel release

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Google sneaks internal PDF reader into Chrome dev channel release

Overshadowed by the introduction of extension sync in today's Google Chrome developer channel update was another important feature which has been in the works for some time. The same Google and Adobe collaboration which led to the introduction of Chrome's internal Flash plug-in has finally resulted in an internal plug-in for displaying PDF files as well.

Neither internal Flash or internal PDF rely upon the venerable old NPAPI system. The hope is that this new architecture will provide a more modern, secure way for browsers and plug-ins to interact. PDFs you view with the internal plug-in will also be safely tucked away in Chrome's sandbox, preventing any malicious activity from damaging your operating system.

If you're running the dev channel, here's what you have to do to turn on the internal PDF viewer:

enter chrome:plugins in your Omnibar
scroll down to the entry for Chrome PDF Viewer
click the enable link, and you're good to go.

As the official blog post mentions, it's a bit limited in terms of functionality at this point. No zoom options or navigation controls are presented yet, so you'll have to page down or scroll down to read. You can, however, search the text using control + F as you would on a web page.

My advice: give it a try, but stick to using the Google Docs Viewer for now.