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Firefox is pretty good these days, but I'm not sure about all of this feature creep. Seems like much of this could just live as extensions. The one place wher

Firefox is pretty good these days, but I'm not sure about all of this feature creep. Seems like much of this could just live as extensions. The one place where I wish they'd invest would be in getting AEC (audio echo cancellation) up to par so I could use Firefox for my WebRTC calls at work.

chownie 3y ago
The PDF features are actually an extension, just one built in as Firefox's default pdf viewer. It's called pdf.js https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/ https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/ You can actually use this pdf viewer in another browser like Chrome if you'd like, there's a demo URL on there.
- remram 3y ago
  That's just abusing the term. If it's built-in, and written by the same team, in what way is it "extension"?
  - chownie 3y ago
    I don't believe it's abuse of the term, it's not part of Firefox's source code -- as far as I'm aware it's literally a web extension that's batched in after build time. It also exists in isolation with exactly the same featureset on the demo link on that README page. With regards to "written by the same team", from the same file: > PDF.js is community-driven and supported by Mozilla. Glancing at the contributors, the vast majority of the additions have come from (in order of most to least) a Google developer, an unidentifiable internet rando, two mozilla devs and someone who works for a Dutch IT firm.
    - remram 3y ago
      Ok, that's fair. It's more than just "using the extension API" like I suspected. Thanks!
- alexjplant 3y ago
  At a previous gig I was working on a web app where there was a requirement for users to be able to "view PDFs without downloading them" (the product person's words, not mine, and they probably got it from somebody in security). I explained that such a thing was technically impossible as the act of rendering the PDF in the browser meant that the computer would have to download it. "There's no way to remove the download button?" they asked in response. No, there wasn't, because each browser would use its own PDF viewer or open the document in one installed on the machine. What if we used our own renderer instead though? After thinking for a second I remembered that PDF.js was a thing in Firefox... would it run in other browsers? Sure enough it did. I was able to fork it, remove save functionality (just a button and a context menu IIRC), and rig it up to load a PDF from our server. The demo ran great in IE and Chrome, the two browsers that we had to support. Everybody seemed satisfied with this solution and called it a day. I have no idea whether this made it to production as I left shortly thereafter, but the fact that it passed muster didn't leave me with a great feeling.
  - jowea 3y ago
    The stupider solution would probably be converting the PDF to an image on the server and sending that to the browser.
- tech234a 3y ago
  Also available on Chromium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pdf-viewer/oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pdf-viewer/oemmndc...
- paradox460 3y ago
  SurfingKeys browser extension does (or used to) bundle this extension https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys

chownie 3y ago

The PDF features are actually an extension, just one built in as Firefox's default pdf viewer. It's called pdf.js https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/ https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/ You can actually use this pdf viewer in another browser like Chrome if you'd like, there's a demo URL on there.

remram 3y ago
That's just abusing the term. If it's built-in, and written by the same team, in what way is it "extension"?
- chownie 3y ago
  I don't believe it's abuse of the term, it's not part of Firefox's source code -- as far as I'm aware it's literally a web extension that's batched in after build time. It also exists in isolation with exactly the same featureset on the demo link on that README page. With regards to "written by the same team", from the same file: > PDF.js is community-driven and supported by Mozilla. Glancing at the contributors, the vast majority of the additions have come from (in order of most to least) a Google developer, an unidentifiable internet rando, two mozilla devs and someone who works for a Dutch IT firm.
  - remram 3y ago
    Ok, that's fair. It's more than just "using the extension API" like I suspected. Thanks!
alexjplant 3y ago
At a previous gig I was working on a web app where there was a requirement for users to be able to "view PDFs without downloading them" (the product person's words, not mine, and they probably got it from somebody in security). I explained that such a thing was technically impossible as the act of rendering the PDF in the browser meant that the computer would have to download it. "There's no way to remove the download button?" they asked in response. No, there wasn't, because each browser would use its own PDF viewer or open the document in one installed on the machine. What if we used our own renderer instead though? After thinking for a second I remembered that PDF.js was a thing in Firefox... would it run in other browsers? Sure enough it did. I was able to fork it, remove save functionality (just a button and a context menu IIRC), and rig it up to load a PDF from our server. The demo ran great in IE and Chrome, the two browsers that we had to support. Everybody seemed satisfied with this solution and called it a day. I have no idea whether this made it to production as I left shortly thereafter, but the fact that it passed muster didn't leave me with a great feeling.
- jowea 3y ago
  The stupider solution would probably be converting the PDF to an image on the server and sending that to the browser.
tech234a 3y ago
Also available on Chromium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pdf-viewer/oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pdf-viewer/oemmndc...
paradox460 3y ago
SurfingKeys browser extension does (or used to) bundle this extension https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys