How do I set Firefox to automatically view text files in my browser window? Sometimes FF insists on downloading them instead.

Question

I use my browser to monitor real time data streams (oceanography) and want to be able to view processing log files directly in my browser window. I have symbolic links from these logs (*.log) to my web server's document directory, using .txt as a file extension for the link (e.g. procdir/argos.m.log -> webdocs/argos_m_log.txt).
Some of these files will display in the browser window, but sometimes FF insists on downloading them instead. The only difference I can see betweens ones that work and those that don't (looking at the original log files) is that the "file" command shows some to be 'ASCII English text' and some (the ones that won't display) to be 'data'. I assume this means there's one or more unprintable characters in the source file - but I'd still like to view these directly in my browser window.

Answer 1

Prefix the link with the view-source: protocol (don't put a space between the protocol and the http link).
*view-source:https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/910776