The Gmail team has apparently been working some solid overtime lately – perhaps Google freed up some cash recently. Just in the past week, the Gmail team has added a nice task manager to Labs, SMS messaging to the integrated chat functionality and now enhanced PDF attachment handling. Gmail users will be happy to learn that Google has completely revamped the way that PDF attachments are viewed. Opening PDF files in a browser is traditionally not a fun thing to do. Many still avoid doing so due to the bad memories of bogging and crashes associated with the Acrobat Reader browser plug-in. For Gmail users, the pain is gone. Gmail now gives PDFs a view option that thankfully forgoes Acrobat and opens them with an OS X Preview-like view. Simple and quick, as it should be. The new implementation should already be rolled out so get ready to start painlessly viewing PDF attachments and wishing that all browser-based PDF viewing could be so easy.
