Give your users the option to see an inline preview of the files they have uploaded to the Files section of your Elgg site.

The plugin works by using the Google Docs Viewer. You are only limited by whatever file formats and mime types Google Docs Viewer supports (http://support.google.com/docs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1738646).

I have only tested this plugin with the File plugin that comes with Elgg. If you are using another file management plugin, I cannot guarantee that it will be compatible with this plugin. Again, the source code is freely available to other plugin authors that wish to integrate the preview feature that my plugin provides.

Important Note About Mime Types

Keep in mind that this plugin works only if the mime types are correctly set. I have found that MS Office 2010 files mime types do not always get set correctly in versions of Elgg prior to 1.8.6. This is why I also created the MSOffice Mime Types Patch plugin to ensure that the proper mime types are set. NOTE: You should remove the MS Office Mime Types Patch plugin if you are running Elgg 1.8.6 or higher.

Walled Garden / Private Sites

Prior to version 1.02 of this plugin, you needed to disable the walled garden setting (Restrict pages to logged-in users) for the Google Docs Viewer to access the files. Otherwise, the only thing that Google Docs Viewer is going to preview is the HTML of your Elgg login page. I added support for Walled Garden / Private sites in release 1.02. 

Server Running Elgg Needs to Public Facing

If you are running Elgg in an Intranet environment, this plugin will NOT work for you, unless you can somehow poke a hole in your corporate firewall. 

PHP DateTime() function and date.timezone

I use the DateTime() function in the code to prevent unauthorized access to file contents. If you see in the server logs that you are getting Elgg fatal exception on DateTime(), then you will need to add this one line to your php.ini: date.timezone = . For example, mine is America/Chicago.