Firefox: Embedded PDFs With Evince (Using Mozplugger)

Mozplugger is a Firefox plugin that allows you to embed applications that handle various file types in Firefox.

In this post you'll see how to get embedded PDF files in Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4 (I've tested it in both) - like in Google Chrome (sort of) - using Evince, the Ubuntu default PDF reader.

Get embedded PDF files in Firefox using Evince

1. Install Mozplugger. Ubuntu users can simply click the button below:

Or copy/paste the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install mozplugger

2. Only for Ubuntu 10.10. In Ubuntu 11.04, it works without this step (and in fact it won't work if you apply this in Ubuntu 11.04): now you must edit the mozpluggerrc file. To do this, press ALT + F2 and enter:

gedit /home/YOUR_USERNAME/.mozilla/mozpluggerrc

(In the above command, replace "YOUR_USERNAME" with your username. No, using "~" doesn't work for the run dialog).

And in this file, paste the following:

application/pdf: pdf: PDF file
application/x-pdf: pdf: PDF file
text/pdf: pdf: PDF file
text/x-pdf: pdf: PDF file
application/x-postscript: ps: PostScript file
application/postscript: ps: PostScript file
    repeat noisy swallow(evince) fill: evince "$file"

Now restart Firefox and try to open a PDF file. It should be embedded in Firefox using Evince if you've followed the steps correctly.

Thanks to hhlp @ AskUbuntu for the instructions.