Opening a local PDF file in Chrome

Question

Ok I see these 2 questions:

How to oepn PDF in another tab

Can google chrome open local links

But I'm not sure they answer my question. I'm trying not to install any PDF reader (Adobe sucks) and know that Chrome will open PDFs I open from the internet. So my question is why won't it work if the PDF is local to my machine? Is there a workaround/plugin/other browser I can use to accomplish this?

The argument of security is totally bogus since how is a PDF I'm opening on the internet any more secure/safe than a PDF I have on my local machine?

Answer 1

Chrome is able to open PDFs opened from internet, because you have some PDF reader installed in your local machine. If you really hate Adobe reader then install something like Foxit PDF reader.

Answer 2

When you say "open a PDF in Chrome", what do you mean, exactly? Are you opening it through Gmail or Google Docs? If so, that's Google doing conversion behind the scenes, converting it to HTML on their servers, with Chrome simply rendering the HTML as usual.

As far as I'm aware, Chrome has no built-in PDF viewing capabilities.

Answer 3

I'm assuming you are on Windows. So, if your PDF is c:\some\path\some.pdf, simply use this URI in Chrome's address and search field:

 file:///C:/some/path/some.pdf

On Linux I'd expect this for /some/path/some.pdf to change to

 file:///some/path/some.pdf

(but have no chance to test this).

Answer 4

I'm running Chrome 8.0.552.18 on my computer now, under Windows 7, and I just clicked and dragged a PDF onto it, and it loaded it up no problem...

And no, it doesn't look like it's using Acrobat or Foxit, or another PDF reader... it looks like Chrome 8 does have its own PDF renderer.