Currently, Chrome will open PDFs using whatever software you have set as the system default (usually Foxit or Adobe Reader). However, the browser’s development build was recently tweaked to always open PDFs using Chrome’s in-built reader, a change that’s been made because “it’s safer”.
Image: Double-J Design / Licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. Image is modified.
According to Chrome “Happiness Evangelist” François Beaufort, this change is already in effect in the latest Canary builds of Chrome. There’s no timeline however as to when we’ll see it in the public release.
Beaufort says opening PDFs in Chrome is “safer” than doing so via an installed program, though users are free to alter this behaviour by right-clicking on a downloaded PDF and choosing the “Open with system viewer” option.
To be honest, I’ve never seen Chrome open PDFs in anything but its own viewer, but for those who prefer the likes of Foxit, Sumatra or Adobe’s own software, you might want to keep an eye on this next time Chrome updates.
François Beaufort [Google+ via gHacks]
Comments
6 responses to “Chrome Is Changing The Way It Handles PDFs”
Hasn’t this always been default? It is on the mac version at least!
Yeah, it’s always “viewed” PDFs inside Chrome. This change makes it so that when you download a PDF and launch the file by clicking it, it will open the same view as if you had “viewed” it.
And yet another thing that google is trying to control in an attempt to get more of your information.
Right click? Where?
“it’s safer” – is it because the other softwares have more exploits?
Implied , is that dhrome pdf reader will have low number of exploits….
Chrome was built around the concept of sandboxing.
I don’t believe the ‘it’s safer’ line. More of a ‘Firefox are now doing it, so then we will too!’
Unless they’re willing to host any-and-every filetype in the browser’s sandbox, the ‘safer’ line doesn’t hold too much merit for me.
will it now support 3D model view in a browser? downside is that this takes us further from having that ability on mobile devices. i think this should be developed as making a 3D pdf and sending it to my tablet is one of the easiest ways to show off models at work on the fly.