pdf and flash add-ons – love firefox 3!

One thing that I (used to) miss when I come home to my Mac after working on a Windows machine all day: viewing pdfs directly in the browser. Found a pdf browser plug-in, but it didn’t work on intel macs. Sigh.

But wait: there is a solution, but you have to download Firefox 3 first. That was enough for me,  I went ahead and got FF 3 so I could install the Add-on Quartz PDF Plugin. (Um, is that an Add-on or a plugin then? ). Worked right away. Yes! Highly recommend it.

What was also really nice about installing FF 3 is that other Add-ons (plugins? extensions?) that got broken  had working alternatives. Flash Tracer, for example. And Delicious. And Resizable Text Area.

Then the real icing on the cake: Flash Switcher! I didn’t even know that existed for Mac!  Happy me. Grazie Alessandro (aka sephiroth.it, well known friend of Flashers ).

So what is the difference between a Firefox add-on, extension, and plug-in?

convert .docs into pdf, rtf or open office format

A free online service is available from the city of Pisa: DocTransformer will convert MS Office .doc files into your choice of .pdf, .rtf or .ssx open office formats. The page is in Italian, but Robin Goode provides a clear and simple walk-through of the steps.

A quick test of a .doc (with images and text, no special formatting) successfully converted the file into a .pdf, though it resulted in a document with 2 more pages than the original. If you need exactly 1 to 1 conversion, you might have to do more testing to get it right. For a quick, free and online solution that does not require you to have Word installed on your computer, however, this service could come in handy. Grazie Pisa!

collecting review comments on pdfs using acrobat

Apparently Adobe Acrobat 7 Pro lets you send out a pdf for reviewers (with reader 7) who add comments to it, then you can collect the comments and combine them. Definitely must look into this one.

From b cognosco review:
http://www.terryfrazier.com/fullThread$msgNum=1567
“With Acrobat 7 they have made it possible to create a PDF file with commenting enabled so that anyone using Adobe Reader 7 can delete text, insert text, or simply add editorial comments. When finished the entire PDF can be sent back to the originator or, even better, the comments can be exported into a separate file. The originator can combine comment files from multiple reviewers and import them back into MSWord to form the basis of revisions.” Or into a pdf, as noted by a commenter.

From pcmag review:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1751158,00.asp
“the Pro version lets you e-mail PDF files for review; recipients can then comment on the resulting PDF files using Reader 7.0. When the documents are returned to the original sender, the comments can be combined and used for final editing. With one of our test documents, we experienced a glitch where a mailed PDF generated baffling error messages when opened in Reader; and, when opened in OS X Mail on a Macintosh, it was saved as two separate PDF files, one broken, one working. You may want to experiment with a trial run before making regular use of this system.”