S3 view Files in browser

Question

I want to view files Such as excel or zip or any other files in the browser without getting downloaded. I am able to display image and pdf files in the browser but unable to view any other format's such as zip or xls . I am storing my files in S3 .

What should i do?

Answer 1

Web browsers are not able to natively display most file types. They can render HTML and can display certain types of images (eg JPG, PNG), but only after these files are actually downloaded to your computer.

The same goes for PDFs -- they are downloaded, then a browser plug-in renders the content.

When viewing file (eg Excel spreadsheets and PDF files) within services like Gmail and Google Drive, the files are typically converted into images on the server-end and those images are sent to your computer. Amazon S3 is purely a storage service and does not offer a conversion service like this.

Zip files are a method of compressing files and also storing multiple files within a single archive file. Some web services might offer the ability to list files within a Zip, but again Amazon S3 is purely a storage service and does not offer this capability.

To answer your "What should I do?" question, some options are:

• Download the files to your computer to view them, or
• Use a storage service that offers these capabilities (many of which store the actual files in Amazon S3, but add additional services to convert the files for viewing online)

Answer 2

I might be a bit too late but did you try Filestash ? (I made it)

That's what it looks like when you open a xls document on S3:

I aim to support all the common formats and the already supported list is rather big already