"Open With Google Docs Viewer" IE8 Accelerator

Accelerators in IE8 work on text within a web page & let you access popular web services from the context menu. For instance, to translate a word you can highlight text from any webpage, and then click on the blue Accelerator icon that appears above your selection & choose the Translate with Live Search Accelerator.

I recently built a "Open With Google Docs Viewer" IE8 Accelerator that lets you view a PDF, Powerpoint or TIFF document on the Web without downloading it to your local computer. Once installed (click on the button on this page), you can use this Accelerator to view any files of those formats within the browser with Google Docs Viewer. It is also helpful when you don't have the supporting application to open the file with. Once the file is opened within Google Docs Viewer, you can choose to download or print or edit it online in case it is a .PDF or .PPT file.

It's easy to build Accelerators and you can find plenty of independently developed IE8 Accelerators (and Web Slices and Search Providers) like my favorite "Find on LinkedIn" Accelerator in the IE 8 Add-ons Gallery.

I submitted one a while back & wish the site's interface to contribute was more explicit & intuitive. To start contributing you have to click on the "Join" link on the top right corner of the Add-ons Gallery home page to create an account. Once you are signed-in, its not immediately obvious where you have to upload your Accelerator XML file. You have to click on your user name after signing-in to reach the Upload page where you have to provide details about your Accelerator. It is published on the Gallery after a Review. It would have been better if names of the contributors were shown once they are listed on the Gallery.

Also see:
HOW TO open a PDF or Word .DOC file within the browser

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