After several updates (windows 7, firefox, etc) I realized that I was no longer seeing the tool bar for acrobat reader when a PDF opened within a browser. This is needed to save the PDF locally or to search within the PDF.
to see the toolbar again press F8
Generally I prefer to open a PDF outside of the browser. For some reason adobe reader X is not obeying my preference deselection for "open PDF in browser" in conjunction with firefox 7.