Is this the setting for PDFs under

Firefox > Preferences > Applications

Or is it a different setting?

yes, in that setting, I choose 'use preview' and it works. Then when FF updates, which can be at least once a week at times, when I run the update, the setting reverts to what I assume is a defalut that opens as save as.. and doesn't give me the option to print, unless I save it first. So each time I update, which I usually agree to for any security issues, I have to go into preferences and reset the 'action' for pdf documents. It seems to be something that FF overrides with each update. And this is the only preference that resets every time.

I don't know whether it would help, but you could delete the settings files that stores those application preferences (AKA download actions) then customize it again and see whether that survives the next update. But hopefully you will get a better suggestion.

You might want to edit your original question and put [MAC] in the subject line to attract Mac users.

(For possible future reference: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cant-download-or-save-files#w_reset-...)

thanks for the mac tip, I will do that. As I hit send on my last reply, I wondered if it mattered, mac vs pc and realized I'd not seen a place to choose that when I submitted my first query. So thanks... Also, I'll look for the settings you recommend and see if that helps. thanks for taking the time to reply ;-)