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How To View PDF Files In Mozilla Firefox

With over 80% of non-HTML documents on the web consisting of PDF documents, viewing PDFs in browsers has become a common user behavior among web surfers. You can come across anything in the PDF format: manuals, quick start guides, white papers, ebooks—the list goes on.

So it’s not surprising that browsers are trying to fill that need with built-in PDF viewing features. We’ve already covered Chrome’s native PDF viewer when it first came out. And other browsers, like Mozilla Firefox, have since followed suit.

Thus, it’s high time we took a look at how you can use Firefox’s PDF viewing feature that was added in the latest version of Mozilla Firefox.

Getting Started

The convenience of these built-in PDF viewers like Firefox’s is that it allows users to open and view PDF files online without a plug-in. The viewer is on by default, so you don’t have to worry about enabling it. All you have to do is click on the link of the PDF file. And just like that, you can view PDFs directly within the browser.

Viewing PDF In Firefox

Overall, the interface is sleek and simple, and the minimalist approach offers a clean PDF viewing experience. Although Firefox PDF viewer worked well with the PDFs tested, it gave us a warning that “this PDF document might not be displayed correctly” and offers up a quick click solution to use a different viewer.

Firefox PDF viewer warning

Depending on the complexity of the PDF you’re trying to view, you might want to take advantage of this. Otherwise, you can close this pop-up and continue to view your PDF.

PDF Viewing And Functionality

Once you have a PDF opened in Firefox, you can accomplish the most common tasks with the file from the toolbar.

Thumbnails: Navigate through the PDF with the built-in viewer’s sidebar navigation. You can toggle between a thumbnail or outline view

Page Up/Down: In addition to scrolling, you can manually go page by page through your PDF

Page Navigation: Jump to and from a specific page in the file

Zooming: For zooming in and out on your PDF content. Click on the drop down box and you can specify the page size and display

And like most PDF viewers, you get features to help you take that file offline or view it more easily:

Firefox PDF File Options

Full Screen Mode: View your PDF document in full screen mode
Printing: Print a copy of the PDF. From the Print dialog you can select the printer drive, the range of pages and the number of copies you want
Downloading: Download and save the PDF to your computer
Copy Current View: Allows you to open the current view in another tab or window

Dealing With PDF Viewing Issues

Considering this feature is only a few months old, you may experience some bugs, slow rendering, or even blank PDF pages. As such, you may want to use Firefox’s built-in PDF viewer sparingly or only on more simple PDF files.

You can also disable the viewer and resort to using your regular PDF plugins or PDF viewers to open PDF files. To do this, follow these steps:

1. In the Tools menu, select Options

2. In the Options dialog, go into the Applications tab

3. Search for and select Portable Document Format (PDF) in the Content Type list

4. In the Action list, click on the drop-down arrow. Here you can specify how you want Firefox to handle PDF files.

Adjusting Firefox Viewing Options

To try Firefox’s PDF viewer yourself, head over to the Mozilla.org site to download the latest version.

5 Great Ideas For Creating A Personalized Mother’s Day Message

No matter how you decide to celebrate Mother’s Day this year, there will always be one thing you’ll give your mother without fail: your Happy Mother’s Day greeting message.

Yet, however you send it to your mother online, whether it’s in an email, an e-card, or posting up a simple “Happy Mother’s Day” message on her Facebook page, it just doesn’t seem enough. Ever think that it could use a personal touch? That it could be made even more special?

Why not take your Mother’s Day message to the next level this year? Make sure it’s a special day with a message specially crafted for her. Here are a few ideas to jazz up your Happy Mother’s Day greeting with a few tips and tools.

1. Digital Photo Albums

Mother's Day Photo Album

Sometimes the best gift you can give is a collection of good moments, and a Mother’s Day Album is a great way of getting them into one single package. When creating it, try getting a good collection of photos over the year since last year’s Mother’s Day. Each year is unique and with it you’ll want to capture the best moments and memories of each one.

Tools: jAlbum, Photobucket, Flickr

Tip: Since albums are ultimately a collection of captured moments, an album collecting different facets of your mother as a person is a great way to show your appreciation for the person she is. For this, create one that has multiple sections. Within each section, designate a category like “mother,” “best friend,” or even “super hero.” Then include photos that show her in different moments, representing those traits throughout the year.

2. Photo Collages

Mother’s Day Photo Collage

We’ve all had those moments we wish we had kept in a bottle, and surely your mother has had them too. Photo collages can be a perfect way to “bottle” those moments up. The best part about collages is that you can be as artistically creative with them as you’d like. Add pictures not normally associated with each other or arrange them in different patterns. See where the collage takes you!

Tools: Fotor, PhotoCollage, Photovisi, Canva

Tip: In your collage, mix in images that you associate with those moments, whether it’s a picture that sets a mood or one that evokes a special meaning to you both. It’s a visually challenging project, but an effective one that doesn’t need words to get your message across.

3. Word Clouds

Just like a collage, word clouds can express your Mother’s Day message with a visual mash up of ideas. This is perfect as a family project as every member can contribute their own words as well. Online word cloud generators are flexible enough to work with websites, documents, and text. In most cases, you can even tailor the shape of your word cloud.

Tools: Wordle, WordItOut.com, Tagxedo

Tip: Fit in words that pertain not just to your mother, but to your relationship as well. For instance, adding nicknames or places that are special to you both will add a nice touch to remembering the memorable tidbits in your lives.

4. Audio Recordings

Mother's Day Audio Recording

A simple post that states “Happy Mother’s Day” just isn’t enough. And let’s face it. A written message doesn’t have the same authenticity or weight than a real live voice. Hearing those words from the mouths of loved ones themselves is priceless. So why not make an audio recording of your Mother’s Day greeting? Add sound effects, special messages or even make a song out of your Mother’s Day greeting.

Tools: Apowersoft, Vocaroo, Chirbit

Tip: Ever hear of that TV show “This is Your Life”? This is a perfect opportunity to replicate that same spotlight on your own mother in audio format. Record every family member’s anecdotes which involve your mother. Then put it all together. The result? Your mother gets to hear some great memories from the people who matter the most.

5. Multimedia Presentations

Mother's Day Presentation

Who says presentations are only for professional purposes? Make a presentation listing all the great things about your mother. This is a more flexible greeting format as you can decide how you want it to look, what you want it to contain and which sorts of media to add—images, audio, text, and even video.

Tools: Prezi, MS PowerPoint, GoogleDocs Slides, Moovly

Tips: Don’t forget that you can also set up presentations as a slideshow. As such, try formatting the presentation as a narrative so it can simply play and take your mother through it. She can watch her mother’s day gift like it’s movie night at home.

How To Convert Your Facebook Data To PDF With Sonic PDF Creator 3.0

Facebook is the number one site where you probably spend most of your time online. Undoubtedly, the comments, messages, photos, and videos you post up end up accumulating into one big online scrapbook of your best and most memorable moments in life. It isn’t any wonder then that you would want to preserve that content offline and onto your computer?

While the videos and photos you have posted up might already be on your computer, there are some related bits, like the notes, comments, Wall posts or Facebook messages, which aren’t.

In fact, one of our PDF Creator Facebook app users was wondering if there was a way in which she could download and get all of her Facebook messages into PDF format.

If you want to download your Facebook data into a PDF file, here’s a detailed and slightly altered step-by-step version of the solution we put together and which you can try out for yourself.

1. Log into your Facebook Account

2. Go to Account Settings

3. Under General settings, click on the “Download a copy” of your Facebook data link below your personal information settings.

You’ll then get an overview of what information will be archived and which won’t.

4. Click on the Start My Archive button and confirm your download. This process may take a while depending on how much data you have. Facebook will send you a link to download your archive file via email.

As Facebook notes, all the data contained on your Facebook profile will be downloaded into one single archive. However, you will get the chance to choose which folder and data you can convert later on.

5. Check your email for the link and click on it to reconfirm your password. Download and save the zipped file to your computer.

6. Extract all files from the zipped folder into a folder or location you can easily access. It contains the individual files of your data– photos, videos, and web-based content.

To access your messages, go to HTML> Messages file.

Double click to open the Messages file in your browser to make sure all the content you want is there.

To convert this data into the PDF format, you can use Sonic PDF Creator 3.0 to convert HTML to PDF.

7. Once installed or if you have the program already, open Sonic PDF Creator and click on the Create PDF From File icon on the command toolbar.

8. Click on the Browse button. Select and upload your Messages HTML file.

9. Click the Create PDF button. This should start the conversion process.

Once your Facebook data conversion is done, you can then add whatever PDF features you want to the file. Add a password, headers, footers, watermarks or bookmarks. When you’ve added all you want, simply save your PDF file in a location of your choice.

This process can work for any of the HTML data files you have in your archive. It’s an easy way to keep or reuse your Facebook content in a secure manner while customizing the file to your needs. Give it a try.

If you have another way of saving and preserving your Facebook data, let us know in the comments below!

3 Different Ways To Post Your PDF On Facebook

Everyone loves Facebook, and with good reason. The social network has rolled personal networking, content sharing, and business marketing all into one platform. And it’s due to things like Facebook fanpages that have made it easy for businesses and organizations to connect with their communities on a more personal level.

As a result, Facebook Fanpage administrators are always looking for different, more efficient ways to use them. In fact, one user had an excellent idea for her Facebook page that turned into an interesting question about PDF documents and Facebook Notes:

I would like to post a pdf (or Word) document to my Facebook page (not my personal page, to my business page). I would like to post it as a “Note” that everyone who has “liked” our business page can access. And I would like those who view the document to be able to print the document. Is that even possible.

It may sound like a simple thing to accomplish at first, but unfortunately, after some searching, we couldn’t find a direct way to do this. But we did manage to find a few interesting workarounds that came close, and we thought they were worth sharing.

Posting PDF Files With A Link

The first method involved sharing the PDF document as a link, which was probably the simplest way to post a document within a Note:

… We looked into this and, unfortunately, the only things you can embed within a note is an image and a hyperlink. Thus, the only straight forward way to add a document is through a URL linking to the document in your note (such as the Share link provided by our conversion apps or by websites like Scribd.com). And you can only restrict who sees the entire note with the Privacy option.

You’ll only have a link to your document, not the actual document itself. But, on the bright side, you can make the PDF URL an active link by using the HTML tags: <a href=“ Your PDF link here” >Your text here</a> with your link and hyperlink text:

To check your link, hit Preview. The HTML tags should disappear, leaving you with an active link in your Note:

Using a link to post a PDF works with group, fanpage, and personal Walls, as well. The only difference is that you have to post the .pdf link into your Facebook status like you would with any web link you want to share on your Wall.

Code Your Page Using Static HTML: iframe tabs App

The second option we were able to find, while a bit more technical, was more visually appealing than using a link:

If you’re a bit tech savvy with coding though, we found that it can be done via Static HTML: iframe tabs App —https://apps.facebook.com/static_html_plus/?fb_source=search&ref=ts. It will let you embed any type of code you want, including code for a PDF, and can be used for any Facebook app page. The PDF embed code can be provided from any document uploading site (http://youtu.be/UtBWa8dE36M ).

Here’s a direct look at the YouTube Video tutorial:

Using JPEGs And Photo Albums

However, in the end, the user solved the problem by using a few creative tactics, offering yet a third way to do it:

I converted my documents to JPEG and placed them in “Photos”. Everyone who has access to the page can open Photos, then open an album, then right click on each photo/document page and “print photo”. It’s weird, but it works.

Indeed, it does work. Even though the content was converted from PDF to JPEG, the PDF content was still viewable. It was a great trick that even allowed her to restrict printing access only to fans.

If you found a handy solution for this issue yourself, let us know. We’d love to add it to the list.

4 Cool Ways To View 3D Content In Your Browser

From reviewing to editing, projects with 3D CAD models require a lot of collaboration. Whether you’re dealing with engineering designs, architectural layouts, or manufacturing plans, you’ll need advanced applications, like AutoCAD, to generate and fully interact with 3D content.

Moreover, like PDF documents, files with advanced 3D content need special viewers. However, most CAD applications offer built-in viewers directly within their software. So what if you or your clients don’t have immediate access to the necessary software?

That’s where these resources fit in. These browser apps allow you to view and share 3D files without the original design software, making a bit of the CAD process easily accessible from anywhere and to anyone with an Internet connection and a browser.

Although these viewers don’t contain the heavy hitting features of full version CAD tools, each one of these has a couple of unique features for practical 3D image viewing online.

* Note that you’ll need a WebGL (Web Graphics Library) enabled browser, one that supports the JavaScript API that renders 3D graphics without a plug-in. These include Chrome 9.0+ , Firefox 4.0+ , Opera 11, and Safari 5.1+ (disabled by default). (For more details, read Which Web browsers Can Run 3D CAD? by Ralph Grabowski).

GrabCAD

Here’s one viewer that was just recently launched by GrabCAD, a community made up of a wide range of engineers with their own expertise. Their 3D viewer is perfect for sharing uploaded content with others who don’t have a CAD application to view it in.

Anyone can view a model by selecting it and clicking on the “View in 3D” button below it. Once the model is opened in the viewer, you can annotate, zoom, rotate and translate the model. To boot, there are some great public 3D models on this site which you can check out without having to download.

GrabCAD members who upload their work have profiles and contact information available, which makes it perfect if you need to get in touch with them or get a quick sample of other work they’ve done.

Online 3D Viewer

Online 3D Viewer is another great viewer that made the list. It allows you to quickly upload your files and view your local 3D models online. You can open files by clicking on the icon or simply drag and drop them. Supported formats are 3DS, OBJ, STL and more.

Sketchfab

Sketchfab is a website for publishing, sharing and discovering 3D and VR content. There are a lot of handy features that come with this tool.

It allows you to easily display 3D models on the web and view them on any browser, mobile, desktop, or a Virtual Reality headset. You can upload the unlimited number of models from your software or your browser and embed them directly on Facebook, blogs, forums or any other site.

Online 3D Content Publisher

The main product of Sketchfab is a 3D and VR model viewer that enables you to move freely around or inside the 3D scene. In addition to static 3D models, the viewer is able to play and control 3D animations and make those models viewable in headsets. The tool relies on the WebGL JavaScript API to display 3D on web pages in all modern web browsers.

P3D.in

P3D.in is an online service for importing, viewing and sharing your 3D models. Although you can opt in for a paid account with extended features, this tool is completely free to use.

Features include: support for Wavefront Obj. files, unique sharing URL generation for uploaded models, privacy options for viewing, navigation settings, model manipulation functions, viewing control options, embeddable HTML code, and 50 MB of storage space when you sign up. Visit their FAQ page for full details.