Feature "Quick View" to vies .pdf document with Google Docs viewer without opening (and downloading) the pdf document itself was new to me.
But how can we enable it:
Trying http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=inurl%3Apdffiles&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=2cca7b2e99206b9c
will show an option.

But more typical searches only show "View as HTML" option...

Below is a web based viewer for pdf, postscript, and word documents.
It converts each page to an image.

http://view.samurajdata.se/

what i do is to keep a bookmark to

http://docs.google.com/gview?url=

in my browser and in case google doesn't offer a view link i copy the url and paste is after the equation sign..

works perfectly for pdf and ppt (which is great since i don't want to download ppts just to glance at them, less important with pdfs due to the browser plugin)

Your tip is almost brilliant, hey thanks!

glad i could help..

cheers
luke