Mac OS X Hints instructs how you can use your browser, particularly Firefox, to read Word documents faster than it would take for Word to open the file. This is useful if you want to read the document, but not edit it. You are shown the process, which includes installing a Word browser plugin, and then opening the file from within the browser. More …
Word files are in a perverted XML format, which all modern browsers should be able to display, provided they have the plugin.