Viewing PDF's *within* browser using PDF-XChange Editor (browser plugin) — for Internet Explorer and SeaMonkey

[DIV]

I would like to know how to view PDF's within a browser using PDF-XChange Editor. (Presumably this would require the use of an associated browser plugin.)
I want to do this for Internet Explorer (v 11.0; 64-bit?) and SeaMonkey (v 2.49.5; 32-bit), which are the main two browsers I'm using.

The Knowledgebase article didn't help me.

I have PDF-XChange Editor (v 7.0; 32-bit) available on my system, and the "File Associations" category does not appear when I open the PDF-XChange Editor, and enter "Preferences".

It is worth mentioning that I set up PDF-XChange Editor as a 'portable' installation, in the sense that it was unzipped and saved to a relevant directory, rather than using an "installer".
I have already successfully 'manually' configured my OS (Windows v 8.1; 64-bit) to use PDF-XChange Editor as the default application to open PDF files from the system — in particular, from the File Explorer.

Internet Explorer
The Knowledgebase article says that I should be able to enter the "Manage Add-ons" dialogue box and then click "Toolbars and Extensions" and select Show = "All add-ons" to find the relevant PDF-XChange Editor browser plugin(s). However, none are listed for me.
Could this be because of my "portable" installation? If so, is there a way to manually force the relevant plugins to be listed, so that I can then choose them from Internet Explorer's "Toolbars and Extensions" interface?
(Maybe just copying a file or two to some location, or maybe doing something like running commandline codes?)

SeaMonkey
I understand that SeaMonkey is not one of Tracker Software's target browsers (even though it is built on Gecko). I am also broadly aware of the NPAPI 'doomsday' issue that affects many browsers, (including Firefox) — but does not affect SeaMonkey.

Currently under Preferences > Browser > Helper Applications I have several items listed under "Content Type" that relate to PDF files, of which the most relevant is probably "pdf File (application/pdf)", for which the Action is set to "Always ask" — and the same choice for all of the other varieties of PDF content.
The available options for the Action on the aforementioned "Content Type" are:

• "Always ask"
• "Save File"
• "Use PDF-XChange Editor (default)"
• "Use Adobe Acrobat 7.0"
• "Use Adobe Acrobat (in SeaMonkey)"
• "Use other..."

Currently, with "Always ask" selected, what always happened in practice was that I got a grey screen (window pane) with a little text message in the centre saying "Activate Adobe Acrobat" (white text in a clickable hyperlink style). Then when I clicked on it, the PDF file would be opened within the SeaMonkey browser, but with an Adobe Reader (DC) plugin as the viewer.

When I set the Action to "Use PDF-XChange Editor (default)", the PDF opens up, but not in the browser — it opens in an external instance of PDF-XChange Editor.

When I reverted to "Always ask", then I (for the first time ever) got a dialogue box asking how I would like to view the PDF file. However, the options there are only for viewing outside the browser, not inside the browser.

By selecting "Use Adobe Acrobat (in SeaMonkey)" I can recreate the original behaviour.

In SeaMonkey if I look under Tools > Add-ons Manager and click on "Plugins" I can find "Adobe Acrobat 19.21.20047.26424" "Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape 19.21.20047" "Last Updated 12 October 2019".
But there is no listed plugin for PDF-XChange Editor.

A quick search for downloadable PDF-viewing plugins for SeaMonkey on the official website revealed only one (a fork of PDF.js).

Thanks for any advice.

—DIV

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello Div,

As browser addins require installation, they are not available to the portable version in any capacity, if you wish to make use of them you will need to install the software on the machine in use. Once you are running the installed version, that article will help you to enable the addin (as the file associations category will appear). I have also updated the article to correctly inform users that the portable version does not offer this function, thank you for bringing that to my attention.

The extensions listed within IE however are a different item, and only our Standard printer plugin will be shown there, not the addin for displaying PDF documents, we cannot change this as they are fundamentally different items, and IE does not support changing all the necessary files on its own while it is open (much for the same reason we require you to close IE while making these changes from the Editor).

Unfortunately, we currently have no plans to branch out to any non-major browsers. Due to recent changes in most browsers, addins like ours are only compatible with IE, and we have minimized development for the others, such as FireFox and Chrome (though it is still ongoing). Until either another browser overtakes them in terms of global usage (one that supports addins), or the current names change their policies, IE will likely be the only option for our browser plugin. Currently IE, Chrome, FF, Safari, and Edge make up a very large majority of all browsers used globally. In the past we have not seen any merit in developing a plugin for a browser which is one of thousands in the remaining fraction of global use. If we did this for one browser, there is nothing stopping users from demanding that we do the same for each and every one of their obscure third party browsers.

Developing new browser addins is complicated work, and unlike some of our competition, we have a small team of expert developers to avoid unnecessary complications, and see faster fixes (as well as clearer more consistent communication) this does have the side effect of limiting scope a bit and prevents us from branching out like you are requesting.

I am sorry to say that for the reasons above, it is highly unlikely we will be developing our addin for Seamonkey, I will certainly bring the idea up with our dev team for you incase they wish to reconsider, but I wanted to give you some explanation to avoid getting hopes too high on this front.

Kind regards,

[DIV]

Hello, Daniel.

Thank-you for your detailed response. I make a few follow-up remarks below.

Internet Explorer

I was not entirely sure from your explanation whether I can view PDF's in Internet Explorer with your plugin or not.
On balance it seems it's not at all possible, because you stated: "The extensions listed within IE however are a different item, and only our Standard printer plugin will be shown there, not the addin for displaying PDF documents". I would expect that if the browser addin for displaying PDF documents is not "shown", then it can't be used.
But then later you did also say: "[...] addins like ours are only compatible with IE, [...]. Until [...], IE will likely be the only option for our browser plugin." Taken in isolation I would have thought this meant that a viewing plugin will work in IE, but from the full context I guess you meant only the printing plugin.

(Not to go off-topic too much, but I don't really know if there is any benefit to a printing plugin over just using the thing [driver?] which is installed as a 'virtual' printer, accessed from File>Print. The virtual printer is a "lite" version for me, so maybe the plugin has more features to configure?? Or maybe it just adds a button to the toolbar??)

SeaMonkey

As you say, SeaMonkey has fewer users than all of the other browsers you mentioned. Nevertheless there are some reasons to have thought that a browser plugin might work for SeaMonkey.

• It has worked in the past (here and here, for example — although these are several years ago). Maybe an older version of your plugin would still work?
• I'm not sure to what extent it is still true, but Firefox and SeaMonkey's browser used to be very similar (both built on Gecko, both from Mozilla). If you had been supporting Firefox, then it might have been little trouble to also support SeaMonkey?
• SeaMonkey is notably one of the limited number of browsers still supporting NPAPI plugins. So while the plugin for Firefox might not be working, it might still work in SeaMonkey?

I also posted this in case any other users have figured out a 'workaround' to get the plugin to work in SeaMonkey's browser.

—DIV

P.S. If you don't plan to do any future development of browser plugins for Firefox or SeaMonkey, then it occurred to me that maybe you could consider 'open-sourcing' the old plugin code that previously worked for SeaMonkey.
When the thought first popped into my head, it seemed like this could make sense. The more I think about it, the less sense it seems to make. Anyway, just to be clear: I don't really know how plugins are written. So I apologise if it was not a reasonable idea.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello Div,

Sorry for the confusion, I will try to clarify here.

The IE Viewing addin, is a part of the PDF-XChange Editor, and must be enabled through our application UI, this is because it requires changes that cannot be made through the usual IE plugin management window or while IE is running. It will work, if you have our software installed on the machine, and you ensure that IE is closed when you first enable the addin.

The printing plugin is part of the Standard printer driver, similar to our Office addins (it actually runs in much the same way). This does add an icon to the toolbar in IE, but converting this way also offer additional functionality, such as maintaining hyperlinks, information that is lost in a normal print operation.

As for Seamonkey, after looking over this onformation, you are indeed correct that as it support NPAPI plugins, it may still work with our old plugins. I cannot remember the exact version we stopped developing these plugins. And as Seamonkey is not a browser we intended the plugin to work for, unfortunately we will not be able to offer much support for issues encountered, but if you download an older version of our software (the plugins may be present in our early V7 standard printer, if not V6 will certainly have it) you may be able to get this working, in an unofficial sense of course.

As for the open sourcing suggestion, unfortunately it is simply not something that can be considered at this time, for numerous reasons.

Kind regards,

[DIV]

Thanks for the clarification. I see what you meant now.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

[DIV]

• SeaMonkey is notably one of the limited number of browsers still supporting NPAPI plugins. So while the plugin for Firefox might not be working, it might still work in SeaMonkey?

Update:
NPAPI support is being dropped even in SeaMonkey:
"The only NPAPI plugin which will work with SeaMonkey 2.53.1 is Flash. Support for other NPAPI plugins like Java and Silverlight has been removed."

In case anyone's interested, I ended up installing the "PDF Viewer for SeaMonkey" browser extension, which is a "fork of PDF.js with support for SeaMonkey 2.49.x", and this has worked fine.

—DIV

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, DIV

Thank you for the update and alternative suggestion.

Kind regards,