How in the Tech

Open and Edit Documents Directly from Firefox

By Adam Myers ⋅ January 27, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Firefox, Microsoft Office

Have you ever had to view or edit a Microsoft Office document that was sent in your direction but lacked the proper applications to do it – say, Office? There are many free and fully featured office applications that can read and write Microsoft file formats, such as OpenOffice, but they are often pretty heavy on resources. I don’t have Office on all of my computers, but I do need to open it’s file formats. Lately, I’ve began to use Google Docs – Google’s online document editor – to do the job. It’s lightweight and takes just a few seconds to get the job done, while I’d still be waiting for OpenOffice to launch. Still, I’d rather stream line the process further.

Open IT Online is a Firefox add-on that takes the online document editing one step further – and it’s a big step in my mind. The extension allows the user to define different online services to use for each document type. I can have .doc files open in Google Docs and .rtf files with Zoho Viewer. When you click on a document link in Firefox the normal Open with…/Save File dialog opens as you’d expect. Open IT Online adds a third option – specifically, open it online! This type of tight integration is really what makes Firefox and online services shine.

Open IT Online isn’t just limited to office document types, it can also integrate online services for photo editing in similar fashion.