I don't like how safari open's PDF in the browser, thus not givng me any of preview's abilities. How can I set it up so that whenever I click a PDF it will automatically open it up in preview. With firefox I can set it, but in safari I cannot find this option anywhere. I have a MBP running 10.4.6. Thanks!
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Safari open PDF in preview
- Thread starter dailo
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I don't know if you can set it to default to that, but you can always right click (control click) on it in Safari and choose open with preview
Actually it can be done. Here's a piece from a Macworld article I found:
Disable PDF viewing
If you click on a link to a PDF document in Safari 2.0, the browser automatically loads the PDF in its current window. If youd rather view the PDF in Preview or Acrobat, or download it, you have to wait for it to load and then manually save it to your hard drive.
But you can make Safari 2.0 treat PDFs the way Safari 1.X did (that is, save them to your default download folder). Heres how: Quit Safari, launch Terminal, and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES
Press return and then relaunch Safari. It will now download PDF documents to your hard drive. You can revert to Safari 2.0s default PDF behavior by entering this command with NO instead of YES .
Looks like there isn't any simple setting to change anywhere, but its not all that complicated to change either!
Disable PDF viewing
If you click on a link to a PDF document in Safari 2.0, the browser automatically loads the PDF in its current window. If youd rather view the PDF in Preview or Acrobat, or download it, you have to wait for it to load and then manually save it to your hard drive.
But you can make Safari 2.0 treat PDFs the way Safari 1.X did (that is, save them to your default download folder). Heres how: Quit Safari, launch Terminal, and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES
Press return and then relaunch Safari. It will now download PDF documents to your hard drive. You can revert to Safari 2.0s default PDF behavior by entering this command with NO instead of YES .
Looks like there isn't any simple setting to change anywhere, but its not all that complicated to change either!
I actually like the fact that Safari can display PDFs in the browser window. I read a lot of research articles online, and waiting for Acrobat to load up each time I wanted to read something was always a pain. Preview is faster, so I use it if I really need to (i.e. extract a figure), but otherwise I like to stay in Safari.
Loading PDFs in browser windows has minimal effect on the speed of their display. If Acrobat handles your browser display, it take time for the Acrobat engine to load up in a browser window. If you use Preview/QuickTime, it still takes time for QuickTime's PDF engine to load up and display the browser window. If you left Acrobat running the background, there would probably be no difference.gauchogolfer said:
MisterMe said:
That's a fair point, and now that I've upped my PB RAM to 1.5 gigs, I just might do it.
Try to hold down option and click the link, it'll download PDF instead of open in brower. That's what I do sometime.
The Mac virtual memory system is excellent. Keeping apps open in the background does not require you to install extra RAM. I have 1 GB RAM and I'm feeling fine.gauchogolfer said:That's a fair point, and now that I've upped my PB RAM to 1.5 gigs, I just might do it.