Sharepoint Developer Notes

A user can view a document from a document library even if they do not have an application installed on the client computer that is capable of displaying the requested document. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation provides the Microsoft.HtmlTrans namespace as an infrastructure on which to build custom converter applications that deliver an HTML version of the requested document in place of the unrecognized binary file format.

The HTML Viewer feature must be enabled in SharePoint Foundation Central Administration in order to use this functionality.