Gmail Now Opens PDF Attachments in the Chrome Viewer

Gmail has made an interesting tweak for those using Google Chrome. Until now, PDF attachments could be viewed online via Google's HTML viewer, but this worked as a preview and nothing more. Now, if you're using Chrome, clicking on the "view" link in Gmail will open it in the browser's built-in PDF viewer introduced last year.

Google hasn't made much fuss over this minor detail, but it does mean that Chrome users will be able to view PDF attachments in the browser properly and skip on having to download the files.

Google introduced the built-in PDF viewer in Chrome for a number of reasons, both over security concerns but also as a convenience for the users.

While many have stand-alone PDF viewers installed on their computers, the plugins are generally slow, eat up a lot of memory and are full of features few ever need.

Of course, security vulnerabilities in those plugins are often exploited leaving the user exposed to risk. The Chrome team would have no control over when those vulnerabilities would be fixed or how often the users would update the software, so the best solution was built-in functionality.

Google actually tested several versions of the PDF viewer over several months. It was finally introduced by default in Google Chrome 8.

Now it's making use of it for one of its other products. While users have been able to preview PDF files in Gmail for quite some time now, the new option is much more convenient.

Interestingly, if you use another plugin or another browser, the PDF files will not load in a third-party plugin. Google has announced the change for its Google Apps users along with other tweaks.

"The following features are intended for release to these domains on February 22 - Visible Bcc: Gmail will now provide email recipients an indicator when they are added via Bcc on an email. We will add a visible Bcc header only to messages sent from another Gmail user, not from external sources," Google announced.

"PDF attachments showing the 'View' link open with Chrome's native PDF viewer if available," it added.