> In addition we seem to be grabbing the PDFs from the server, converting to Base64 and then rendering as an object in the react app (rather than just linking t

> In addition we seem to be grabbing the PDFs from the server, converting to Base64 and then rendering as an object in the react app (rather than just linking to the pdf file directly). > What benefit do we get from this complexity compared to just having static HTML pages that someone would update manually? In the good old days, HTML was simple because it was just text + <h1>, <p>, <b>, etc markup and HTML forms, and web authors were ok / expected that the web browser would do the heavy lifting and render it appropriately for the client OS using native toolkits / widgets. These days, the publisher wants 100% control over everything, so all that rendering / toolkit that was previously left to the browser is re-invented in JS. Ask your superiors why you need to embed a PDF viewer in your page instead of just linking the to PDFs and letting the client open it in their local browser / Acrobat / PDF-viewer of choice. They'll probably mumble something about a consistent experience, what if the user doesn't have acrobat installed, etc.