Easing the Firefox / Adobe Acrobat experience

If you use the Firefox web browser, you may experience surfing woes with the Adobe Acrobat plugin. The plugin is notoriously buggy and often hangs my web browser. However a simple solution is at hand which requires no downloading at all!

The simplest solution is to ask Firefox always to open a pdf document in a separate Acrobat window. To do this, open the Tools menu and select the Options... dialog box. Choose the Downloads tab and click View & Edit actions. From here, you can tell Firefox what to do whenever it is presented with a particular type of file. Naturally, this extends way beyond Adobe Acrobat and can be used for many different file types. Of course, it would be easier not to install the plugin in the first place, but this approach provides one with a certain degree of flexibility. For those who require an extra degree of flexibility, you may wish to try the PDF Download Firefox extension. This queries the user on what to do each time a pdf link is clicked.