If you download a Microsoft Office document (like Word document(.DOC, .DOCX)), then you need a viewer application (like Microsoft Word) installed to view or edit it. But what if you do not have any viewer application installed? Do not worry, you can view or edit it inside your browser online. The Open IT Online add-on for Firefox allows you to open any document online using many free online document editors like Google Docs, Zoho Office and Vuzit etc.
When you click on a link to one of the supported document types in Mozilla Firefox you would see an Open With dialog with options to save the file, and also for opening it using many different online viewers and editors. You can choose one of them to open the selected file online and view or edit it. Although, you can use these services yourself to view the selected documents online, but using the Open IT Online add-on makes the whole process very easy.
The Open IT Online add-on can handle the following types of documents :
- Documents (*.DOC, *.DOCX, *.RTF, *.ODT, *.SXW)
- Spreadsheets (*.XLS, *.XLSX, *.CSV, *.ODS, *.SXC)
- Presentations (*.PPT, *.PPTX, *.PPS, *.ODP, *.SXI)
- Images (*.JPG, *.GIF, *.PNG)
This is how you can install and use the Open IT Online add-on in Mozilla Firefox :
- Visit https://addons.mozilla.org/ in your Firefox browser.
- Click on the green Add to Firefox button to install the Open IT Online add-on.
- Restart Firefox to complete the installation of the add-on.
- After the restart of Firefox, you will see a configuration wizard to configure the Open IT Online add-on. You have to choose two main online services — one for viewing documents and other for viewing images. For documents, you can choose any one from ViewItOnline, Google Apps, Google Docs, Zoho Office, Zoho Writer and Vuzit. For the images, you can choose any one from Pixlr, Snipshot, Sumo or Picnic. If you are confused, choose Google Docs for Documents and Pixlr for Images. After you have selected the services, click Next and then Finish to complete the wizard.
- Now you can just click on any document link and you would see an Open With dialog. This dialog would have extra options for Opening Documents online. When you click Open, the document would start opening in the selected service.
Open IT Online shows you also the file size of the document you could see online: this information helps you determining if you want to open the file online or not.
- You can also right-click on any image, and choose an online service to view and edit it.
- The Open IT Online add-on is not limited to opening files located over the internet. You can open documents stored on your local hard disk too. To open documents or images stored on your local hard disk, click on the Open IT Online icon in the lower-right corner of your Firefox window and select Open File. Select a file and click Open, then choose an online service and it will be uploaded and opened in the selected online service.
- You can click on the Open IT Online icon in the lower-right corner of your Firefox window and select Options to open the Options window for it. In the Options, you can choose whether a document is to be opened in a new window, new tab or the same tab. You can choose the default viewers for many different supported file types. You can also choose where in Firefox should the Open IT Online shortcuts are to be shown.
The Open IT Online add-on for Firefox makes your life easy and is very productive. You no longer have to install the Office Suites like Microsoft Office or Oracle OpenOffice which take a huge amount of hard disk space. You can just use the online services conveniently using the Open IT Online add-on for all your documents editing needs.