Google Docs Viewer Shows PDF Docs Into HTML Pages
During the year 2009, Google Docs service already introduced support for live PDF viewing. Taking into account the immediate advantage of displaying PDF directly into a web browser, which removes the need of a third party desktop application employed as PDF client, Google was just made available this technology to all webmasters and users through a new web based service, entitled Google Docs Viewer.
In a recent article published on Google Docs blog, Jesse Kinkead, Software Engineer at Google explains the functionality of Google Docs Viewer service:
“Starting today, we’re opening up this technology to all webmasters and blog owners with the Google Docs viewer. All you have to do is give the URL of a PDF, Powerpoint or TIFF document to us and we’ll display it directly in your browser with no download required.”
Google Docs Viewer is very easy to use: just enter or paste the URL pointing to a PDF, PowerPoint or TIFF file into the corresponding form field on Google Docs Viewer page and hit the “Generate link” button.
The generated link will direct you to a new web page which shows the desired document. The web browser based document viewer provides many navigation options, like forward and back buttons, multiple page view in the same window and document search form.
You can also print or download the entire document by clicking the corresponding links.
The most important feature of Google Docs Viewer service is the possibility of adding an embedded viewer into your pages with an automatically generated HTML tag, as iframe, like the next example:
As an alternative for presenting a document, the generated link pointing to the document web page could be included in an instant message, email or as a reference in any HTML page.
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