Google Chrome is fast becoming my browser of choice, but it has a few annoyances which stops me completely dumping the once-excellent but now bloated Firefox.
One of these has been how Chrome handles links to PDFs. Upon clicking them, the browser displays the PDF in its own reader. Whilst this is quick, the in-built reader is feature limited and doesn’t behave in the way I have come to expect a PDF reader to.
You can force Chrome to open PDFs in your default PDF reader (typically Adobe Reader) by following these steps:
- Click the spanner button and select ‘Options’
- Go ‘Under the hood’ or ‘Under the bonnet’
- Select ‘Content Settings’
- In the ‘Plug-ins’ section, click the ‘Disable individual plug-ins…’ link
- Look for ‘Chrome PDF Viewer’ in the list, and ‘Disable’ it.
Next time you click a link to a PDF, it will download the file so you can view it as you would normally 
Earlier in the week I went to see a stage production of 1984, Orwell’s dystopic tale of a near-future totalitarian nightmare. Performed at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, this adaption by Oldham-born actor, director and playwright Matthew Dunster was suitably bleak and disturbing (and highly recommended).