Google Chrome and PDFs

Google, in their quest for galactic domination, have developed their own browser, Chrome. It's not bad, but I still prefer Firefox, particularly because of the range of add-ons available. Very recently, our attention has been drawn to the way that Chrome handles PDF requests. Not very well it seems. Chrome has a newly built plug-in for viewing PDFs which may confuse people. When you are searching EBSCO, and want to look at the full-text of an article, clicking the full-text link may bring up a grey, but otherwise blank screen. Don't panic! Instead, look at your browser window. Below the URL address box, there should be a blue menu bar. One of the options on this bar is "Download PDF".




If you click this, Chrome will open the PDF in a new browser tab.

If you don't have "Download PDF" as an option on the menu bar, perhaps you don't have the PDF viewer plugin installed or enabled. You can check by typing chrome://plugins/ in the address box and looking for "Chrome PDF viewer".

If you are still having problems, here are some suggestions from Google themselves

You can also disable the Chrome PDF viewer (and switch to Adobe reader, if you have Adobe reader, that is) by:

Click Wrench icon located next to address box and select "Options"

Click the "Under The Hood" tab

Click "Content Settings" button under "Privacy"

Select "Plug-ins" and click "Disable individual plug-ins" (a new browser window may appear - chrome://plugins/)

Disable "Chrome PDF Viewer" which should...

...Enable "Adobe Reader 9" (Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape "9.4.1")