Like many website owners, I want my visitors to be able to view my software development PDF files without being discouraged by technical problems that may hinder the opening of the documents. The easier my documents are to access, then the more likely they are to be seen – it’s that simple. Downloading documents to a local machine takes more time. And even then, the site visitor may not have the software installed on his or her computer to open it. Fortunately, there is a terrific and free of charge solution for webmasters and it is called “Google Docs Viewer”.
Google Docs Viewer is “cloud based”, which is where the IT world is moving nowadays. In other words, there is no need to download this application and install it on a computer. All I have to do in order to access a document is click a link on a web page. As an example, I retrieve my programming code PDF file for my “April through June 2012 Jazztime In C Sharp.net” edition web page like this using a html link tag:
“https://docs (dot) google (dot) com/viewer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww (dot) analyzohiosoftware (dot) com%2Fcsharpjazz_04120612.pdf”>
The supported document types that “Google Docs Viewer” can accommodate includes:
Autodesk AutoCad
Adobe Illustrator
Apple Pages
Adobe Photoshop
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Word
PostScript
Scalable Vector Graphics
TrueType
XML Paper Specification
After you clink on a link to bring up “Google Docs Viewer”, you will see a small menu with the options “File, View and Help”. The “Help” area has a help center and user forum to assist you with any problems or questions you may have. The “View” area has options to zoom in and out as well as options for fitting either 1 or 2 pages of the viewed document to the screen width.
The “File” area has an option to search the viewed document by a search term you enter into the search box in the upper right hand corner of the screen just above the viewed document. You will also find options under “File” to search for the next occurrence of the search term as well as the previous one. There are also up and down arrows on the search term text box that replicate is functionality. This is nice, because you don’t have to keep going back to the “File” pop up menu to do this or use the “F3” hot key for search next or the “Shift-F3” hot key for search previous. Also in this area you are given options to download the viewed document to your computer as well as saving it to Google Docs online if you are signed up for it. However, signing up for “Google Docs Viewer” isn’t necessary if you just want to use it to view documents in a web directory like I do. Lastly, there is an option for printing the viewed document via a print dialog that appears.
Below the menu bar is a row of function buttons. These include “view previous page”, “view next page”, “print”, “zoom out” and “zoom in”.
Beneath the row of function buttons are small snapshots of each page in the viewed document arranged in vertical succession. Aside from the navigation function buttons, you may also click each snapshot with the assistance of a vertical scroll bar just to the right of them. There is another vertical scroll bar just to the right of the viewed document itself so you may freely scroll its entire length.
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is the main feature; muiltple users can even edit the same spreadsheet at the same time.Microsoft Excel ViewerMicrosoft Excel viewer is a free download from Microsoft and runs on all Windows versions from XP