The internal Adobe Flash plugin was only the first step to improve on the traditional browser plugin model. The Chrome developers have integrated a native PDF reader plugin, which they call Chrome PDF Viewer, in the latest Chrome dev release.

Native PDF support has the same advantages that native Flash support offers.

PDF files render like HTML web pages, allowing basic interactions (zooming, searching) with the document.

The native pdf plugin is disabled by default and needs to be enabled by going to about:plugins and selecting the enable link next to the Chrome PDF Viewer entry.

chrome internal pdf

PDF files are displayed as websites from that moment on when the user left-clicks them. The Chrome developers promise to improve the rendering quality before the Chrome PDF Viewer gets integrated into the beta and stable channels of the web browser.

chrome pdf viewer

The current implementation is not supporting all advanced features of Adobe Reader. Google plans to give users a choice to launch Adobe Reader – or another pdf reader – instead if their rely on those advanced features.

The PDF functionality is using the web page rendering sandbox of Chrome to protect users from malicious documents and exploits.

Interested users can update the browser internally by clicking on the Wrench icon and then About Google Chrome or by visiting the Getting Involved page to download the latest Google Chrome dev release directly from the Chromium project server.

The premise of the article is that living without PDF readers is possible if you do not have to use them for work (either readers or creators). The author of this article – that would be me – accesses about 10-20 pdf documents per month. That’s not a lot and using alternatives to pdf readers is not a task that is slowing down work by much.

A user on the other hand who reads 10-20 per day might think otherwise.

The question is: If there are no pdf readers installed, how can pdf documents be read? There are two answers to this question.

• Use an online service to process them
• Use a pdf converter to convert them into another format

Online services like Google Docs can display pdf documents right in the web browser. The advantage of this method is that the pdf is not executed on the user’s computer system which means that any exploits will have no effect. It takes on the other hand a tad longer to open Google Docs, upload the pdf and view it online.

Some users have also reported that Google Docs did not offer all the features and functions that Adobe Reader for instance offers. Those users might need to keep Adobe Reader or another pdf reader for now.

Users who are only accessing information can do so with Google Docs or Zoho easily.

Converting pdfs instead is a second solution. This can also be done offline or online. There are tools available that can convert pdf documents easily like Hello PDF for instance. It would however mean to replace one software with another which might also be exploited.

Online pdf converters like Free PDF Convert on the other hand offer the same advantages and disadvantages as online pdf readers.

It should be quite possible to uninstall all pdf readers and use one of the two alternatives described above. Some users might prefer to install a lesser popular pdf reader like Sumatra instead.

Which pdf reader do you have installed? Would you be able to live without a pdf reader on your computer?

Sumatra concentrates on pdf viewing only but does that very well. Pdf documents are opened blazingly fast and the program does not require lots of computer memory or resources in general to operate. It is offered as an installer or portable version and it’s size of 1.1 Megabytes make it an ideal candidate for mobile usage.

We had some complaints about Sumatra which are still valid. It is for example not possible to mark and copy text from the documents. Not everyone might need that feature but those that do need to find another pdf viewer that comes with that option.

The main interface language of Sumatra (English) can be easily changed to several dozens others that are included in the download. The installer and portable version as well as the source code can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Enter PDF to Excel and PDF to Word, two online services created by the same developer that convert pdf documents in microsoft word or microsoft excel documents. Both products are available online and simple to use. Three steps are required to convert the pdf document. The user needs to select a pdf document from the local computer system, pick a output format and enter an email address where the converted pdf document should be send to.

The test results have been impressive. Take a look at the screenshot of the first page of a pdf document and its Word conversion.

The conversion comes close to the original. Some parts might need some fine tuning but the overall look and feel of the pdf document has been carried over and probably more important than that the data in the tables looks exactly like that in the pdf document.

PDF to Excel (link) and PDF to Word (link) are two helpful online services for users who have to convert pdf documents into Word or Excel format.

PDF Creator is compatible with most Windows operating systems including the beta of Windows 7. The application makes use of Ghostscript to provide the pdf functionality. The pdf software generator comes with a few additional features that makes it interesting. It can created PDF/A documents, create encrypted pdf documents and merge multiple documents into one pdf document.

PDF Creator can also create different file formats like PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, EPS. Another interesting option is to install the PDF Creator application to run on terminal servers.

The PDF document will be imported into Draw and Impress to preserve the layout of the documents. This naturally means that Draw and Impress have to be installed to work with the PDF Import Extension. Plans are to concentrate on editing capabilities in the next development step concentrating on Writer. Just keep in mind that the current version of the PDF Import Extension supports layout and not editing.

PDF documents can be imported using the Open file dialog. Import takes relatively long but the results are surprisingly good for a beta. One interesting feature of the extension is the option to create hybrid documents that consists of a pdf and odf part. Users with Open Office installed will open the ODF version of the document while users without will load the pdf part.

Open Office users that work with PDF documents from time to timeshould pay close attention to the development of the PDF Import Extension.

PDF Meta Edit (the complete name is BeCyPDFMetaEdit) is a software program for Windows that provides not only means to view the PDF document meta information but also means to edit them. The application can be downloaded as a portable version or one that needs to be installed on the computer system.

Functionality is the same and the software program opens the file browser immediately after starting the application. After loading one pdf document from the computer it will display the meta information in the first of eight tabs.

The program displays the title, author, keywords, subject, software that was used to create the pdf document, file creation and modification dates and copyright notices in that tab. Each of the information can be edited individually. The Clear All Fields button alternatively clears all information at once from the PDF document.

PDF documents use XMP metadata in addition to the one that is displayed directly. If the document’s meta data is edited by the user he should also make sure that the XMP metadata is deleted to avoid conflicts.

The six remaining tabs contain additional information about the document. The Viewer Preference tab for instance defines the page and layout of the document while the Bookmark’s tab lists available bookmarks.

The pdf converter Graphics2PDF can convert selected bmp, jpg, gif, png and tiff images into one or several pdf documents. The interface of the software application has been reduced to the minimum. The user drags and drops images into the interface which are then displayed as thumbnails in the order of appearance in the pdf document. It is possible to change the order by using the <> keys that are visible below each image.

A click on Save PDF will convert the images into a pdf document that can be viewed with Adobe Reader or another compatible pdf reader.

The pdf converter software misses a few parameters that would increase its usefulness like options to encrypt the pdf document and to add other elements like text, copyright information or links.

No word on compatibility on the software developer’s homepage. The version ran fine on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system.

The software can be used to scan multiple partitions at once. It displays a list of all found Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF and zip files on the selected partitions listing both the encrypted files and those that are not encrypted.

Additional information is displayed in the list like the path and name of the document, the size and the date the file was modified. The software program can be used even if the corresponding applications are not installed on the system.

A Risk Evaluation Report On Information Leak is created at the end which provides detailed information about the discovered files and their information leak risk. SolFileFinder is compatible to Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 / 2008.

It states on the download page that the download is a trial version but there does not seem to be any restrictions.

Auto Unbreak is a small 22 Kilobyte tool that has only one purpose. It takes text from pdf documents and removes the line breaks of those texts before it provides the user with an option to copy the newly formatted text to the clipboard again.

Auto Unbreak is a portable application that can be executed from any location of a computer system. It ships with two files that define merge and exception rules which might come in handy for users who deal with specifically formatted text.

The rule files can be edited in every text editor. The homepage of the developers have been suspended, please download the tool from this link. It is temporarily hosted here at Ghacks until the developers announce their new website.

Splitting makes sense as well. Maybe only part of a pdf document is of relevance. Instead of keeping the complete pdf file a user could split the document and keep the important parts and delete the rest.

The Open-Source tool PDF SPlit and Merge has already been mentioned before in the split and merge pdf files article at Ghacks. Adolix Split Merge PDF is another free software that can be used to split and merge PDF files.

The software program uses a tabbed interface that provides access to a split and a merge tab. One PDF file can be added to the split tab which contains options to split the pdf file into files of x pages each or by selecting page ranges.

The merge tab looks pretty much alike with the difference that multiple pdf files can be added to it which are then merged in order.

Adolix Split and Merge can split and merge password protected pdf files. It is compatible to most Microsoft Windows operating systems and was tested on Windows XP Service Pack 3.

PDF Image Extract was designed with ease of use in mind. The user can load multiple pdf documents at once which are then queued in the main program window. Information about each pdf document are provided in the lower pane.

The right contains settings for the output images. The range of pages that shall be processed can be selected as well as the output quality and format of the images.

A click on the start button processes all selected pdf documents. The images are saved into newly created directories in the pdf document root folders.

PDF Unlocker is a free software that can unlock PDF Document restrictions. This is done by moving the pdf document on the shortcut of PDF Unlocker which will remove the restrictions automatically and create a new pdf document without the restrictions.

This pdf document can be printed, edited and copied. PDF Unlocker has a second function. PDF Documents can be password protected to prevent unauthorized access to them. The software provides a way to unlock the pdf document if the user can provide the password that protects it.

Update: PDF Unlocker is no longer free, you can download the latest free version of the PDF unlocker from this location

Adobe Acrobat can be used as a trial version for 30 days and it actually does have the exact functionality that Victor is looking for. You can download it directly from Adobe with some nagging done by them. Before you can download the file you need to register an account and request the download link which will be send to your email account. My advise to Adobe is that if they want to lower their sales further they should make it even more complicated for users to download the trial versions.

Download and installation take a while since the download has a size of more than 250 Megabyte. Once installed though everything could not be more fluent. Press the keyboard shortcut SHIFT CTRL O or click on the Create PDF > From Web Page button. A menu opens that is asking for a url and offering several options on how to proceed from here.

You can specify the levels from the originating page or that you want to convert the whole website. It is normally a good idea to stay on the server and even on the path. If you do not do this the PDF could really download a lot of unrelated pages from other websites or areas of the same website. You will see the transfers in a box and the final version of the document will be shown at the end.

Works perfectly. The result can then be saved in the end as a pdf document.

PDFMeNot is another time safer especially if you do not like the Adobe PDF format at all. It accepts PDF documents and turns them into some sort of slideshow with zooming functionality. The easiest way to use PDFMeNot is to either paste the url of a PDF document into the form on the main website or add the url behind http://pdfmenot.com/view/ in the address bar.

A bookmarklet and a Firefox extension are available as well so everyone should find something that he likes to use and feels comfortable with. Another nice feature is that you can embed PDF documents in your website if you use PDFMeNot.

Here is what I normally do with the interesting articles that I download. Once I have them all on my hard drive I use a software to merge them so that I can access them in one pdf document which is much more convenient. The tool that I’m using for this is the excellent PDF SPlit and Merge which is available at Sourceforge.

I was not able to find any limitations so far concerning the amount of pdf files that you can add to be merged. I guess if there is a limitation you can still merge the newly created pdf document and the remaining pdfs that have not been added in first run.

The order of the files can be changed and pages of the documents can be excluded as well. There is one other option to check if at least one of the documents contains a form. The run button merges all selected pdf documents.

A status message is displayed that shows the progress and an error message if something should go wrong. The pdf document that caused the error is marked in the file list so that you can check it or remove it.

Splitting files is a little bit complicated because you obviously have to define how you want to split the document. Options are to split it in single pages, after n pages, after page numbers, or after even or odd pages.

I first thought it could be my computer because it’s not the newest anymore as you might know. A quick search revealed the portable application Sumatra which I had heard about before and the decision to install it was made quickly. The installation was unproblematic and I changed the default viewer from Adobe PDF Reader to Sumatra.

A click later showed a Please Wait Rendering notice which quickly was replaced by the first page of the pdf file that I was going to take a look at. I was able to scroll two pages and was greeted by another Please Wait Rendering notice. Although this was not what I expected the overall performance was much better.

Sumatra seems to use some sort of advanced caching which reduced the rendering period to a minimum.  The pages that were rendered already where very responsive and I was able to take a look at them without further delays.

I’m not saying that Sumatra is the perfect solution but it is far better than the orginal PDF reader by Adobe. It would be interesting to know if you ran into similar troubles and if you did find a solution for them. I have tried other PDF readers in the past but not under the aspect of loading huge PDF documents into them.

I did find PDF Crack 0.8 for Windows which is a port of the Linux program PDF Crack. PDF Crack is a command line utility which has been tested with Adobe Reader 7 only. It seems that the project has been discontinued and I had no chance to test if with a PDF document that was created and password protected with Adobe PDF 8. If any of you have the chance to create such a document let me know, I would really like to find out if it is possible to recover those passwords as well.

Run pdfcrack.exe in the command line to receive a list of commands. The default command is pdfcrack.exe -f filename OPTIONS. Cracking a file called abc.pdf without options would be possible with the command pdfcrack.exe -f abc.pdf

The options can be used to load a dictionary file, specify a minimum and maximum length for the password, permutating passwords (currently only uppercase for first letter) or use only the characters specified in a given string as chars for the password.

To be honest, I never found out why it was not working for some users. I asked them to update to the latest version which most of the time would fix the display problem. Sometimes however I would run into customers who had the latest version and still were not able to display the PDF documents in the browser.

Those customers usually received either a white page with no information whatsoever or a white page with a small red X icon (or a red square, a blue triangle, or a blue circle) in the upper left corner. If that was the case I started by asking them to download the PDF document in question and open it once it was downloaded to the system.

This usually worked which meant that it was a browser related problem. I soon discovered a method that worked in most cases. The Adobe PDF Reader has an option to display PDF documents in the browser window. I decided to turn this off and display the PDF document normally in the Adobe Reader at once.

To do that I went to Edit > Preferences and clicked on the Internet tab in the left menu. The first entry on the right side is Display PDF in Browser which I unchecked. After restarting the browser then new option was enabled and it did work very nicely in most cases.

Sometimes unchecking it and then enabling it again if unchecking did not work did work. Sounds strange I know but who cares if it helps ?

It really becomes painful if this changes do not have the desired effects. I personally would be happy if downloading the PDF and opening it locally would work unless I had to perform this task many times a day.

Other options would be to change the browser because it seemed that most of the time the Internet Explorer was giving the users those troubles. Check out the official Adobe Knowledgebase article for more tips on solving this matter.

Pdftk runs from the command line which means you should unpack the software into a directory that you can access easily. I put the file into c: for testing purposes along with two pdfs called 123.pdf and 456.pdf.

If you run pdftk without parameters you get a quick output that details the most important parameters. Lets take a look at the possible operations:

Merge pdf files:

pdftk 123.pdf 456.pdf output 123456.pdf

This tells pdftk to merge the two pdf files 123.pdf and 456.pdf into a new pdf called 123456.pdf. If you want to merge more than two pdf files at once you simply add them between pdftk and output. You could also use wildcards to merge many or all pdfs with a certain name.

pdftk *.pdf output 123456.pdf

Split pages from one or more pdfs:

pdftk A=123.pdf B=456.pdf cat A1-2 B4-5 output 1245.pdf

Repair a pdf:

pdftk 123.pdf output 123fixed.pdf

Merge encrypted pdfs:

pdftk A=123.pdf 456.pdf input_pw A=password cat output 123456.pdf

Pdftk offers several more possibilities which are worth a look if you want to do something that I did not describe on this website. A version for Linux and Windows is available.

Read More:

Pdftk Homepage