Open download files on Snow Leopard. Not save.

Is there a way to only open the download files on internet and not to save them on the laptop.

For instance when you want to read a text document usually saved as .ppt online that is linked on internet but not save it on your laptop like it automatically execute.

I would like to be able to do it mostly for my student's portal website. A lot of lectures slides are linked and in .ppt format and I would just like to open and read it but the laptop save it directly without any choice asked.

Please let me know,

Thank you.

No plugin that I know of will open PPTs in the browser. The best that I can come up with is to use Google Docs Viewer. For instance, there is this PowerPoint file (the first one I found when I searched PPT in Google). As you'd expect, it will download given that there is no browser plugin. If I use the Google Docs Viewer, I end up getting a link that does this. You can make URLs for Google Docs Viewer here. There are two limitations that I can think of right away - it may not work if access to the PPT requires logging in somewhere and it may or may not render the slideshow perfectly (you'd want to test them beforehand).

Open files, not save

Thank you for this fast reply.

That seems a bit too complicated to do though. I'd rather just delete the files after use.

You mentioned that there are no plugins for the browser to open these files, but I was wondering if there is an option or preference on the OS to just open a file downloaded on the web, on the program it's meant to be opened on. For example if I downloaded whatever .ppt file, to have it open on powerpoint, but not saved on the laptop.

I know that on windows, whichever the browser used (mozilla included), it will give the option to save, as well as just open. However mozilla on mac doesn't give the same options, so I guess if there was a solution it would be in the OS itself.

Don't really know if anything else can be added, but if you do find an idea or solution please tell me!

Thanks

You can have Firefox open up a file as well but as you've noticed, the file is saved and then simply opened. This really isn't any different than browsers in Windows where the file is simply saved to a temporary directory and opened. In this instance, you can see the situation is the same except for the location which, in Windows, is out of sight of the average user. Just a note .

Another option is to save the PPT as a PDF, upload that and depending on the built in PDF support of either Safari or Chrome. There's a PDF plugin for Firefox but it hasn't been updated to support Firefox 4.0. There is also a Google Docs Viewer plugin for Firefox available if that works for you.

I think I'll just wait that the OS is a bit more performant about this matter. If it happens.

On windows, the file is saved in Temp yes.. you right. BUT only for a while and is usually removed quite fast when it gets "old". Or if you really don't want to wait you've got the option to remove the whole TEMP file with the cleanup utility.

Thanks again