The 6 best Firefox extensions for PDFs
PDFs are one of the most useful file formats due to consistency across all platforms, but that doesn’t mean the format is perfect under any circumstances. As with any system, PDFs have flaws, but don’t worry. There are plenty of solutions.
If you are a Firefox user, these solutions can be fairly straightforward in the form of extensions for your browser. Here are six of the most useful.
The first complaint that many of you might have with your PDFs is that they are difficult to read. In the past, you may have heard that Firefox’s native PDF reader leaves some functionality to be desired, so why not use an extension that seeks to address this shortcoming?
Soda PDF is a Firefox extension that connects to the Soda PDF Online editor, and simply viewing PDFs here is just the tip of the iceberg. Soda PDF lets you edit, convert, and annotate your PDFs without having to worry about downloading unnecessary software.
Soda PDF also lets you connect to your file hosting services like Dropbox and Google Drive, a handy feature for anyone who uses these services extensively.
Some of the best Firefox extensions are straightforward. Open in PDF Reader is an example of one of these extensions.
Open in PDF Reader is a Firefox extension that adds an additional button to the menu that appears when you right click while browsing. This add-on, titled âOpen in PDF Viewer,â does exactly what you’d expect.
The extension will download the PDF file for you and then run a quick command to open it in whatever your system considers the default PDF viewer. This is especially handy if you frequently need to download PDFs for work or school, as it completely eliminates the hassle of having to find where you downloaded every PDF you might need.
If you often need to download PDF files instead of just viewing them, then Print Friendly & PDF might just be the extension for you.
Print Friendly & PDF is a Firefox extension with a few different functions. Firstly, it makes any page you visit more user-friendly for printing. What does this mean, you ask? This means Print Friendly & PDF automatically cleans and formats web pages removing unnecessary files such as advertisements and navigation menus.
The main intention here is to print web pages so that you don’t waste ink and paper, but it also works wonders for PDFs. With Print Friendly & PDF, you can easily turn any website you find into a PDF for later viewing, without having to worry about its formatting or structure making it hard to read. .
If you are looking for something better for the bulk, then PDF Mage might be the best choice. Where Print Friendly & PDF has a lot of features, the interface can get slightly clunky if you try to save many web pages in a short period of time.
This is where PDF Mage shines. PDF Mage allows you to save any web page you visit as PDF with just one click. The files all automatically go to your default download folder, which means you can quickly browse page after page without having to adjust or change any settings.
PDF Mage is also able to save only parts of a web page if desired, although this undermines some of its utilities. You can access all of this from the PDF Mage button, which Firefox should automatically add to your toolbar.
If you’re looking for a more feature-rich plugin, PDF2Go might be the plugin for you. PDF2Go lets you quickly convert images, web pages, and files to PDF, just like some of the other entries on this list, but where they stop, PDF2Go is just getting started.
PDF2Go relies on its website for a lot of additional features, which you can access from the PDF2Go button, which Firefox should automatically add to your toolbar upon download. The functionality here is extensive.
Editing PDF files and converting to and from PDF are both supported. You can easily use it to edit an existing PDF or convert it to a format like Word or Excel. PDF file merging and splitting is also available for times when you only want to send one or more files.
Extracting or deleting images is easy and PDF2Go can even attempt to repair damaged PDF files automatically. For passwords, you can easily add or remove them as needed if you want more or less security on your document.
PDF2Go also supports more specialized functions such as quality and color settings for image conversions and the ability to straighten slightly crooked scans.
Finally, we have Copyfish. Copyfish is an interesting extension as it is basically free OCR software that you can access from your browser.
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, which is basically another way of saying that Copyfish is able to extract real, editable text from images.
For some OCR programs, this only applies to images and images, but Copyfish is able to extract text from images, videos and of course PDF.
The situations in which you might need to extract text from a PDF might seem limited, but if you use a lot of poorly optimized PDFs for work or school, you will know how useful this feature can be.
Online PDF extensions are just the start
You can’t always use your browser, and why would you want to? There are a lot of features here that are invaluable, but that doesn’t mean Firefox extensions are the ultimate in PDF viewing.
There is always more to consider when it comes to PDFs. Extensions can only get you so far, and when you really need to view a PDF, you can’t always just rely on your browser. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives and places to look for, as long as you know where to look.
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