How to Install a Firefox Quartz PDF Viewer

View PDFs in your browser window.

If you want to view a PDF you find online, typically you have to download it and open it in a PDF program. This can be an annoyance if you only want to get a bit of information from a PDF. Quartz PDF viewer for Firefox 3 allows Mac OS X users to view PDF files within their browser. Unlike the "View As HTML" feature search engines sometimes provide for PDFs, this keeps the original formatting of the PDF. Installing this plugin only takes a few minutes.

Things You'll Need

• Mac OS X 10.4 or higher
• Firefox 3

Instructions

1. Open Firefox and visit the Quartz PDF Viewer page at the Google Code website (see Resources).

2. Click the "Add PDF plugin to Firefox (Mac OS X)" link. A window will pop up asking if you want to install the plugin. Click the "Install Now" button in that window.

3. Restart Firefox when the plugin installation has completed.

References

• Google Code: Quartz PDF Plugin
• Lifehacker: Quartz PDF Displays Inline PDFs

Resources

• Google Code: Quartz PDF Plugin