Google Chrome users can open pdf documents directly in the browser. While the viewer is not comparable in functionality to desktop pdf readers, it is certainly enough to read a document online.

And native support for Adobe’s Flash technology ensures that Chrome users are automatically updated to the newest version whenever it is released, which improves overall security significantly.

Some Chrome users on the other hand may not want to use the native plugins of the Chrome browser. This can be the case if they have noticed that the Flash plugin is acting up or if they have installed a feature rich pdf reader on their system that they prefer to use.

Chrome, even with another Flash or PDF reader plugin installed, continues to use its native plugins for Flash and PDF contents (see Why are Two Flash Player Plugins Running In Google Chrome? for instance for an explanation).

Users of the Chrome web browser need to disable the native plugins before they can use third party plugins or software instead. This is done by entering chrome://plugins/ in the Chrome address bar and hitting enter.

The page that opens displays a list of all plug-ins currently installed in the Chrome browser. Relevant for this guide are the Flash and Chrome PDF Viewer plugins. A click on Disable below the Chrome PDF Viewer disables those capabilities in the browser.

In regard to Flash, it is a bit more complicated. It is necessary to click on Details first to display all installed Flash plugins in Chrome. Locate the Flash plugin that has its location in the Chrome application folder and click the disable link to disable it. Make sure another Flash plugin is still active if you want to use the technology on the Internet.

That’s how you disable both the native Flash plugin and the native pdf viewer in Google Chrome.

Are you using Google Chrome’s native plugins? Or did you notice issues using those plugins?

If speed is the main issue the relatively new pdf file viewer MuPDF could be an option. MuPDF is a bare-bones pdf file viewer with a low memory footprint and the fastest pdf loading times that we have experienced until now. The pdf reader is a portable Open-Source cross-platform program for Windows, Linux and Mac OS operating systems.

Users can either execute the program which will open a small file browser to pick a PDF document or link the pdf file extension to the program so that it will be automatically the viewer of choice for pdf files.

MuPDF is perfect for users who want a portable resource friendly pdf reader. It comes with a few keyboard shortcuts to navigate documents more easily but lacks the functionality of Foxit Reader or Adobe Reader.

• L, R Rotate page in 90° increments
• +, – Zoom in and out
• W Shrink wrap window
• N, space Next page
• B, backspace Previous page
• Shift-N Skip 10 pages forward
• Shift-B Skip 10 pages backward
• M Mark page for snap back
• T Pop back to last mark
• 123G Go to page

Not everyone needs advanced functionality but some users might miss options to copy text, search for text or print a selection of the pdf file. MuPDF on the other hand is probably the best solution for users who want to view – and only view – pdf files on their computer system without having to download and install a software program. A Firefox add-on is provided by the developer as well to view pdf documents on the Internet.

DjVu needs only half the size than jpg images for photos of the same quality and displays photos of the same size in a higher better quality. Look at the comparison between jpg and djvu images, very interesting and a file format to look out for.

It’s one of the favorite formats for technical documentations and scientific documents. The viewer itself is a no thrills no frills viewer that can display the supported formats. It was designed with speed in mind, it opens pdf documents as fast, or even a bit faster, than Foxit Reader which is one of the fastest of its kind.

The main benefit of STDU Viewer is the support of the three mentioned formats and its speed. There is not really a reason to change from Foxit Reader to it if you only work with pdf documents on your system. If you use at least two of the formats it might be a viable alternative.

The official djvu website has a download section with additional clients for Windows, Mac and Linux plus an add-on for Microsoft Office.

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.

Several freeware alternatives – like the Foxit Reader – are able to display pdf files as well and do that a lot faster than the Adobe Reader. I would like to introduce another possibility and that is to use the software Adobe Reader SpeedUp which speeds up loading time of the Adobe Reader tremendously.

It scans your system automatically for Adobe Reader versions and has the option to speed up the pdf viewer by removing some of the plugins that are loaded during startup. It is possible to either uncheck plugins manually or select one out of four different templates.

I decided to try the Turbo template which loads only a handful of plugins. This had the effect that the Adobe Reader was starting instantly, almost as fast as if you would be starting Notepad. This is a huge difference to the time it took to start before.

You might want to make sure that you do not need the plugins that are deactivated in this process. The Plugin Help button explains what each plugin does which means that you can now make a decision based on those information.

I’m using the Adobe Reader to view pdf documents which works well with the Turbo setting. If you use it for instance to view ebooks protected with DRM you would need the eBook Adobe DRM plugin.

Update: Adobe Reader Speedup has been discontinued A working alternative for Windows is PDF Speedup which offers a similar feature set. The program is compatible with older and the latest Adobe Reader.