Google Makes Latest Chrome Build Open PDFs By Default

An anonymous reader writes "Google is changing the way its browser handles PDF files, starting with the Chrome Canary channel. Citing security concerns, the company wants Chrome to open PDF files by default, bypassing any third-party programs such as Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader."

Comments

Great

[sexconker]

Great. Another configuration change to manage on all our workstations.
The Chrome PDF viewer is shit. So is the Firefox one. They're fine for viewing most basic PDFs, but anything more involved (forms, interactive PDFs, portfolios, etc.) and they both just shit the bed.

Re:Great

[LunaticTippy]

I understand hating the built in viewers, but to me they are a blessing. There are so many things that are PDFs for no reason. I really appreciate a quick and dirty way to see PDFs, and with my usage it is good enough 90% of the time. For the interactive ones etc. I tend to recognize which ones aren't going to work so I just download the file. On unfamiliar systems I always grit my teeth when clicking a link causes a 20 second delay while Adobe Viewer lurches from the shadows and demands to be updated.

Re:Great

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Why are we even holding onto PDFs, anyways?

I myself tend to like PDFs for print materials because it's pretty much the only format that is guaranteed to scale exactly as shown. When I scan documents, or create documents that are primarily going to be used in print form, it's pretty much a given that they'll always be PDF's.

For anything else though they're annoying.

Re:Great

[mbkennel]

| Because we love formats which are impossible to convert into any other format; which require complicated, ugly tools to perform even basic formatting,

This is a feature, not a bug. It's not just a feature, it is THE feature.

I'm very serious. Plenty of times an 'editable' PowerPoint is substantially garbled when it's opened up on a different version, or some Office configuration changed, or it's on somebody else's installation or it's 3 years old, or it needed an equation plugin, or the fonts are whatever...

If I have an important presentation---"save as PDF" is essential. I want to be able to give away (and use) poorly-editable copies which Microsoft programs will NOT do anything to.

That is an essential feature.

| and because we desperately need a format which essentially displays graphics and text to require weekly updates to remove the latest batch of exploits.

PDF isn't the problem. Adobe is that problem. MacOS and other software display PDF fine.

Re:Great

[icebike]

Agreed, I actually PREFER to have Chrome open a pdf, because its one less virus ridden file I have to deal with.
I'm still given the option of saving it if I want. Chrome itself seems to recognize which PDFs it can't handle, and prompts for download.
(but those are PRECISELY the ones you have to worry about the most. )

I really don't understand why this is news, since Chrome has been doing this for years now.
(At least since 2010 according to TFA).

Maybe they will enhance it enough such that we don't need to run any Adobe software. With Adobe dropping linux support
all together, there are no fully capable alternatives.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

If a new feature is added by way of an update, it should prompt for its settings the first time it becomes relevant. So on the first click on a PDF the browser should prompt: "you can now view PDFs within the browser, enable / disbale this feature / let me try once and prompt me again." It shouldn't silently enable the feature and let the hapless user hunt in the settings for a way to disable it, that's just rude.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

| Because we love formats which are impossible to convert into any other format; which require complicated, ugly tools to perform even basic formatting,

This is a feature, not a bug. It's not just a feature, it is THE feature

This. I was doing literal rocket science (a project for the ISS) and Solidworks document printing was incessantly moving things around (typically on top of something else, making both notations illegible). I printed always to PDF, fixed the errors in PDF, and then submitted *that* paper to the controlling authority (JAXA, in this case). I couldn't trust Solidworks to print what it said it would. I could trust PDF.

AC

Re:Great

[HJED]

I don't know about the chrome one, but in Firefox the inbuilt PDF viewer correctly displays less than half the pdfs I open. This is primarily due to its terrible Unicode support (worse than slashdot), but also due to failures in displaying pretty much anything that isn't text.

Re:Great

[djdanlib]

Yup, especially restaurant menus, which are *always* in PDF. It's frustrating when you're on mobile and just want to see the menu before you commit a large party with diverse dietary restrictions to going somewhere.

Re:Great

[houghi]

The reason is that they use Word to make their PDFs to print them out. This saves time. Just upload the one you used for printing.

To me it seems if you can not be bothered about the presentation on a website, will you bother with details in your kitchen?

Talking resyaurant websites. It seems that especially high end restaurants have terrible websites. Just two examples of high end restaurants:
http://www.thefatduck.co.uk/
http://www.cellercanroca.com/index.htm
As great as their food is, as lousy is their website. Seriously: what were they thinking? If they treat the food as they treat their website, McD should be the highest quality food.

I'm OK with that...

[tibit]

On older laptops - those that reasonably work well only with XP, I not only install Chrome as the best performing browser, but I also advise people to use it to view PDFs. Note that viewing a PDFs is very different than filling it out etc. A viewer needs to be simple and well performing, and in my experience, even on 10+ year old hardware, Chrome shines there. So, for one, I do welcome this change.

"third-party programs"?

[themushroom]

bypassing any third-party programs such as Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader

Technically, Adobe Reader is the first-party program and Chrome is the third-party program for reading PDFs.

Re:"third-party programs"?

[Ksevio]

I think it means "third-party" in relation to Chrome, not PDFs

hell, a complete OS os smaller than most PDFs

[raymorris]

For that matter QNX, a complete graphical OS including essential programs like a web browser and even a web server is a couple MB - smaller than many odd DOCUMENTS.

I wonder how blazingly fast a 4MB OS is on 4GHz machine with GBs of RAM. The CPU could process the entire OS in less than a millisecond.

Re:hell, a complete OS os smaller than most PDFs

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I wonder how blazingly fast a 4MB OS is on 4GHz machine with GBs of RAM.

No matter. Adobe will find a way to bring the system to its knees.

Sunnary unclear

[The MAZZTer]

1. It will NOT change the way the system handles PDF files.
2. It has NOTHING to do with how the browser views PDF files on the web (the Chrome PDF viewer is already the default).
3. It only affects how Chrome handles when you choose to open a downloaded PDF file.

Likely this was done to be consistent. Any security the Chrome PDF viewer could offer could be easily bypassed by an attacker forcing the file to download. If the user clicks it, it opens in the system PDF viewer.

I believe Adobe Reader has its own sandbox so this might seem a bit weird... but at least one thing Chrome has going for it that Reader has not is that Chrome is more likely to be up-to-date (I forget how Reader updates itself, if it does at all) AND it pulls the latest Chrome PDF plugin with it.

When I set a default

[msobkow]

When I set a default for a file extension in the OS, I expect the browser to respect that setting. Both Firefox and Chrome are now "bad apples" in the desktop configuration arena. Shame on them both. I see no reason why their implementation would be any more secure than the applications I've already chosen.

Re:When I set a default

[Dahan]

So when you click a link to a JPG file, does it open in the browser, or does it open in the viewer configured for .jpg in your OS? I'd wager that for just about everyone, it opens in the browser. What's different about PDFs that you think they shouldn't do the same?

party in your pants

[themushroom]

And you're the only one who came.

Simple as that

[lesincompetent]

chrome://plugins/
Chrome PDF Viewer --> Disable.

Re:So very much this.

[Zenin]

That's completely opposite of my experience.

On my not-so-hot computer I regularly open very complex, 400+ page PDFs (music scores mostly). We're talking 30MB w/o any imbedded images, just pure intensive processing instructions.

Chrome, from a total standstill (the process not even running yet), takes just slightly longer then it takes me to blink to start, load the PDF, and render. It's an order of magnitude faster in every way then every other PDF viewer I've tried, and I've tried quite a few.

It lacks features (PDF bookmarks, etc), but render speed is fantastic.

Re:How so very secure!

[LordLimecat]

Back in reality, this will stop a large number of infections from occurring.

Re:adobe reader.

[mysidia]

how can a document renderer, basically a postscript web browser with ALL THE FUNCTIONS REMOVED, be bigger than an virtual computer in your computer?

Ah.... what you are missing is clear now. You missed the point that a PDF viewer is a virtual computer in your computer.

Among other things.... PDFs can contain scripts and various executable bits. What do you think the major source of security issues in PDF is?