View open document text files with Firefox
Posted by Percy Cabello on February 15th, 2007 • Tags:
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As ODF (Open Document Format) advances as an open alternative for text documents, spreadsheets and presentations it makes more sense to be able to open these documents from Firefox directly.

ODT file rendered by ODFReaderODFReader is a Firefox extension developed by that renders the contents of ODF text files (.odt) as HTML. Specifically it renders the contents.xml file inside .odt file (which are zip archives) applying a template (XSLT) designed by J David Eisenberg.

It has some limitations however as it doesn’t render the full styling or even images. So think of it as a quick tool to get to know what is inside without having to open another application like OpenOffice.org.

Another limitation is that files can’t be opened directly from a remote web server but must be saved to the computer and then opened using File/Open.

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Comments
Ken Saunders said on February 16, 2007, 10:11 pm:

Nice find and a good story.
I can’t wait until it’s developed
a bit more to cover the limitations that you mentioned.
Ken

jay said on May 21, 2007, 4:16 am:

Hi

I have to open one text file whose size is 317MB, so how can i open this file, or in which application this text file will open

Thnaks
jay

Percy Cabello said on May 21, 2007, 6:58 am:

Could you provide more details? Either a regular text file or an ODF text file can be open with Firefox if using this extension.

For regular text files you should use a more powerful text editor such as NoteTab Light (just Google it). For ODF documents, try OpenOffice.org. They are much better suited for handling monster documents like yours.

Jim S said on August 22, 2009, 12:46 am:

Hello Percy Cabello,

Please, i need your help… How do i open a FireFox Document…

I downloaded a 200MB free game on net, it dint download as zip or any other file… it downloaded as FireFox Document… Please, how will i open it, install it and play it on my pc ????

Thanks..
Jim

harry said on December 5, 2009, 5:26 am:

i;ve downloaded a 375mb video in wmv.rar.htm
it shows as a firefox document..how do i view this video?

thanks

harry

DAN said on March 24, 2010, 3:16 pm:

i downloaded open office and since then it continually conflicts with microsoft word 2000, as well as word conflicting with odt. in my opinion neither are reliable or consistent.

allanj said on April 26, 2010, 2:27 pm:

I run the OO plugin for firefox on linux. Spreadsheets and presentations open nicely, but .doc and .odt files open the OO Word in the content pane with no document. Is there a fix for this? Is this a linux (Kubuntu 9.04) or ff (3.5.9) config issue?

Omar said on June 22, 2010, 7:41 am:

Hi
can i ask a question even though it might be sort of dumb
well i been trying to open a text document like in this viedo is said but i cant see where the text document could be, i looked every where

Can you please help!!!!!!!!!???????