View PDFs In Google Search Results Without HTML Conversion
Google’s search results have long included a “View as HTML” option tacked next to PDF files it indexed. Now it’s increasingly just “View”, as the native viewer app used in Google Docs is available for quick document scans.
Google’s converting PDFs to PNG files for faster loading and skimming, but you can still search for individual words inside the viewer. The pages of a PDF can be viewed in page-by-page or grid alignments, and there’s still a “Plain HTML” click option for those who like the stripped-down versions. Google seems to be gradually indexing PDFs for its viewer, so some files may still have only the HTML option until the spiders from Mountain View do their work.
Google’s PDF Viewer for Search Results [Google Operating System]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
It would be nice and fit quite nicely with the cloud mentality if you could save PDFs viewed through this interface to Google Docs.
Can this be possibly used as the default pdf viewer, for those not reached through a Google search?
@jupiterthunder:
Yup. Just ignore me. Having one of those really bad days.
el_Paraguayo
@el_Paraguayo:
and there's still a "Plain HTML" click option for those who like the stripped-down version
jupiterthunder
@el_Paraguayo:
Obviously I could just view the PDF...
el_Paraguayo
The Norwegian government just announced a couple of days ago that pdf should be the default format for non-editable files used by the Norwegian state.
It makes a lot of sense with a pdf-reader directly in the browser. Now we just need some sort of API, so sites can display pdfs with the Google pdf-reader. That would help a lot with site useablity especially towards the non-tech savvy audience (ie, most people).
onemoreday
This is the BEST thing from google in a long time!
How many times do you (especially in academia) search for something, and want to look into the PDFs to see if it suits your needs? All the time!
And since I dont want to open reader just for that, I used to sometimes click view as HTML which obviously never works right and then you end up being angry for the rest of the day.
Thank you google. Maybe next you add an RSS button to chrome? You know, Like every other browser?
holyspidoo
Ok. So if I click 'View' it seems to divert to a Google Docs page which, helpfully, is blocked by my firm.
Is there any way to get the "View as HTML" option back?
el_Paraguayo
@RobinSure: Haven't, rather.
RobinSure
Potentially useful if you have picked up one of the 100s of firefox addons that shows pdfs in browser.
RobinSure