I have down loaded and set up Portable FF 3.5.1. In the preferences under "applications" I see no option to set my PDF down loads. It has always been there on other versions of FF. What is going on with this? Thanks
New: Kanri (Oct 9, '24), Platform 29.5.3 (Jun 27, '24)
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Mine is labeled "Adobe Acrobat Document". Have you checked there? (top of the list)
1. Find a system that has Adobe Reader (formerly Acrobat Reader) installed.
2. Do a search, for hidden files and folders, and include system folders, called nppdf32.dll.
3. Copy it to X:\PortableApps\Data\plugins where X is your flash drive's drive letter.
4. Try again. It should work. If not, another plugin is required, but I'm sure that's the only one.
I'm not using Adobe for my PDF reader. I use Portable Sumatra and Foxit. I figured out how to get it to appear in the preferences for FF. Just open a PDF file and the dialog that opens lets you select what you want to do with the PDF than that program shows up in the FF preferences.
The problem now is that after I select my PDF reader on my thumb drive the path changes with the different drive letters which didn't happen with FF 3.1. The apps you select for files now is not portable since the path changes every time the drive letter changes.
I don't know then, but you were on the right track opening the PDF with Firefox and telling it where to go. Shame it's not a portable solution, with it not keeping track of the paths. Seems the DLL is the best solution.
Which shouldn't mean Adobe or nothing. Maybe the makers of Sumatra could develop a DLL for Firefox that allows Firefox to read PDFs with their code as opposed to Adobe's. Until that happens, though... if you want to avoid Adobe, you may just have to save those PDFs and drop them on Sumatra. That's what I generally do. Never thought of using Firefox as a PDF reader, but I suppose it could be, and I can even bookmark my PDFs, though I don't think bookmarks are dynamic, either - they probably point to the drive letter.
Indeed - I use the PDF Xchange program, its a ton faster than foxit or sumatra, with more features (even in the free version).
Don't know how portable it is, but each time i install windows, I just have to associate PDF's with the file the first time i need to access one and that's it until next reinstall.
You don't use Firefox as the PDF reader. You tell Firefox what program you want to open PDF files with. Once that is set if you click on a PDF link Firefox will automatically download the PDF file and it will open in the PDf viewer that you selected.
As for the comments of what PDf viewer people prefer I like Sumatra and Foxit because I find them light and fast. I tried PDF Exchange before and it used huge amounts of RAM so I removed it. Might be better now but I'm happy with the two I use. Now that Foxit stores it's settings in a ini file I can use it portably. Used to be you had to go through a involved process to get Foxit to be portable but now it's built in.
These settings are saved in the mimeTypes.rdf file, and the PortableApps launcher for Firefox will modify and put the current USB drive letter to make sure it always use the right drive.
For example, Sumatra is on the E: drive and I associate PDFs to open with E:\PortableApps\SumatraPDFPortable\SumatraPDFPortable.exe If I plug the drive somewhere else and the drive letter is not the same (G:), the Firefox launcher will check the mimeTypes.rdf file and modify the path to make it reflect the new location
E:\PortableApps\SumatraPDFPortable\SumatraPDFPortable.exe
would become
G:\PortableApps\SumatraPDFPortable\SumatraPDFPortable.exe
Yes that is how it is working for me now. Always did in previous versions but for some reason in 3.5 the first few times I set my PDf reader in FF it didn't stick when the drive letter changed but now it's working as it should.