Viewing PDF files in Safari with OS X Tiger

Question

In versions of Safari running in Mac OS^? X prior to Tiger, clicking on a PDF^? file link would open it the my preferred PDF viewing application. Now, in Safari running Tiger, the same PDF link opens in Safari. How do I get the file to open in my application of choice instead?

Requirements

Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4 (version 10.4.4 or newer recommended)
Safari version 2 (version 2.0.3 ( 417.8 ) or newer recommended)

Background

Apple changed a few things as noted here when they released Safari updates for Mac OS X Tiger. In previous versions, clicking on a PDF link in a web page always launched your application of choice (for example Preview.app or Adobe Acrobat Reader). In the most recent versions of Safari, the PDF is automatically loaded in the Safari Browser window. Alternatively, if you had installed the AdobePDFViewer.plugin (for example, as part of installing the Netscape web browser), PDFs will also open in Safari with an extra control strip at the top of the screen.

What To Do

There are a few options available to help remedy the situation.

Option 1: Download the linked file
When you see a link to a PDF file in a web page, you have two choices. First, simply click the link; that typically will load the PDF file into your Safari window. Second, do this to download the linked file instead:

1. Press Control and click on the PDF link in the webpage (or right-click if you have a multi-button mouse)
2. Choose Download Linked File^? from the Contextual Menu

3. the file is downloaded to your hard drive. Now you can double click the downloaded file to open it in your PDF viewing application of choice

Option 2: Send the file to Preview after it opens in Safari
If you have already opened the PDF file in your Safari browser window, you can still send the file to your preferred PDF viewing application by doing this:

1. Press Control and click on the PDF file being displayed in the Safari window (or right-click if you have a multi-button mouse)
2. Choose Open File with Preview.app from the Contextual Menu. Note, the application name listed will vary depending on how you have setup your system. For example, if you have told Mac OS X to always open PDF files in Adobe Acrobat Reader, then the contextual menu would read Open File with Acrobat Reader 7.0.5.app or something similar

3. the PDF file will open in the specified application. Depending on the access privelages of the PDF file and the features of your PDF viewing application, you may be able to save the file to your hard drive, print, or edit it's contents.

Option 3: A PDF Viewer plug-in is installed at the Mac OS X level
In some cases, you might have a PDF viewing plug-in installed which automatically displays the PDF file in the browser window with some additional control options. The PDF viewing plug-in isn't installed included with typical Mac OS X installations. However, one situation where you may have unknowing installed the plug-in is if you downloaded and installed the Netscape browser.

In that situation, you choice is similar to option one, do this:

1. when the PDF file is open in the Safari browser window, click on the Save to Disk Icon

2. choose a location on your hard drive to save the file to and click Save
3. the file is downloaded and saved to your hard drive. Now you can double click the downloaded file to open it in your PDF viewing application of choice

To manually check if you have a PDF viewing plug-in installed, do this:

1. Open the following folder: startup disk/Library/Internet Plug-Ins
2. Look for a file named AdobePDFViewer.plugin
3. To uninstall the plug-in, simply drag AdobePDFViewer.plugin out of the folder noted in (1)
4. The next time you launch Safari the plug-in will not be loaded

If you think the AdobePDFViewer.plugin is a pretty neat feature that you'd like to have, but you don't want to download and install the Netscape browser, do this:

1. AdobePDFViewer.plugin.zip as a zipped archive (96KB) to your hard drive
2. double click the file named AdobePDFViewer.plugin.zip downloaded in step (1) to extract it
3. Quit Safari
4. drag the file named AdobePDFViewer.plugin (extracted in step (2)) into the following folder: startup disk/Library/Internet Plug-Ins
5. the next time you launch Safari and click on a PDF link, you'll see the controls noted in screen shot shown above

We hope that helps
caddpower.com

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