Integrate Google Docs Viewer into Firefox, Chrome and Opera for Instant PDF Viewing

Google Docs Viewer, is an online document viewer which can be used to view PDF’s, Microsoft Word Documents etc. I don’t know if you’ve observed or not, when you search in Google and if a document (PDF or Word file) comes up in the search result, you’ll be given an option called Quick View, to view that document then and there itself without downloading it to your computer. This has been implemented by Google a long while back, but I’ve started to notice its power only in recent times.

For me, it looked like a great idea. View documents without downloading! If all websites integrate Google Docs Viewer like Google, then it would be easy for us to view documents. You know, this will never happen. So, let us do the other way. Let us integrate Google Docs Viewer into our browsers, so that whenever we come across PDF’s while browsing, instead of downloading them to view, we will open them with Google Docs Viewer with a single click and view that document online instantly.

This has several advantages :

1. View documents instantly : You can view documents without needing it to be downloaded to your computer.
2. Save hard disk space : Most of the documents we download are just for one-time reading. So, by using Google Docs Viewer we can avoid piling up our hard drive with that unnecessary clutter.
3. Google Docs Viewer support large number of file formats like .DOC,  .DOCX, .XLS, .XLSX, .PPT, .PPTX, .PDF, .PAGES, .AI, .PSD, .TIFF, .DXF, .SVG, .TTF, .ZIP, .RAR etc. You can avoid downloading all these files and view them on Google Docs Viewer itself.

Most of the browsers support addons/extensions. So, let us make use of those addons and integrate Google Docs Viewer into browsers.

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer for Chrome :

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer, which is developed by Google itself, integrates Google Docs Viewer (GDV) into Chrome. In order to view a document in GDV you need to right click on that link and then select View File in New Tab. If you just click on the link, the file will download as usual.

Google Docs Viewer for Firefox :

Google Docs Viewer addon for firefox works similar to the above chrome addon. You need to right click and select Open Link in Google Docs Viewer.

gPDF For Opera :

Unlike above addons, gPDF makes GDV the default document viewer for Opera. That means, no need of right click or anything. If you come across a link of a document, just click it to open that document in GDV.

So, start using these addons and integrate Google Docs Viewer into your browser to speedup your browsing and also to avoid unnecessary clutter piling up your hard disk.

P.S : Unfortunately for Internet Explorer I didn’t find a way to Integrate