PDF Download 2.1 expands compatibility to include Internet Explorer in addition to Firefox, which previous versions supported.Adobe likes to say that PDF is ubiquitous on the Web, and in our work life. Whether that's true or not, there's no arguing with the 12 million people who have tried to make PDFs easier to manage using the Firefox version of
Nitro PDF's browser plug-in
PDF Download. The plugin, an Internet Explorer version of which the company released in mid-December, converts HTML pages to PDF, and lets users will view PDFs as HTML in the browser rather than downloading them for viewing in a PDF viewer..
Version 2.0 of the Firefox edition came out of beta late last year with, among other features, the ability for users to set page margins for PDF files created from Web pages. Nitro PDF CEO Sam Chandler says that feature was one of those most often requested by users, to help create more attractive printouts.
Chandler said he was happy to expand his company's reach with an edition for IE, which still holds around 70 percent share in the browser market. Market surveys estimate that shares of the higher profile but less widespread Firefox range between 20 percent and 25 percent.
"We think IE will continue to lose market share, and Firefox will continue to gain it," Chandler says. "Stealing share from both of them will be Google Chrome and Safari."
With that in mind, Chandler -- a professed Chrome fan -- says Nitro PDF will announce within weeks an "interesting development" involving PDFs and Chrome. Safari support will come after that, he says. Support for Flock -- an alternative that uses Firefox's code base but is designed specifically for social networking -- is also a growing browser of choice among PDF Download users, Chanlder says. iPhone users have steadily fueled Safari's growth, as well, and warranted Nitro PDF's development of a compatible version of its plug-in.
PDF Download for Firefox became popular for a couple of reasons: It offers a free, fast way to save Web pages for offline viewing -- with either active or inactive hyperlinks. And its PDF-to-HTML feature gives users more control over how to view PDFs that are often either slow to download or can crash the browser being used to view it.
It works sort of like Google's HTML browser for PDF documents, except you don't have to encounter a PDF on a Google search results page to invoke the HTML view -- a popup dialog box offers save/view/bypass/cancel choices.
Interestingly, while most users of the plug-ins run Macintosh or Windows operating systems, users on Linux machines make a "small but not insignificant" group that accounts for almost four percent of all PDF Download usters, Chandler says. With an installed base of 12 million overall and between 500,000 and 800,000 new downloads per month, even a low-single-digit percentage is a pretty big number.
Document Management 
