21 ms·

Pdf.js: PDF Reader in JavaScript

371 points by pykello 14y ago

dutchbrit 14y ago
As a big user of PDF.js, I have to say it's great for basic PDF documents. However, complex vectors don't render nicely with this
jowiar 14y ago
1) From a technical perspective, this is damn cool - exceedingly well done. Color me very impressed. 2) I hope I never actually see anyone using this on a website, attempting to make things "easier." Between Scribd and Slideshare, and Adobe trying to force its hideous crash-prone plugins into my browser, there are already enough people making a mess out of what is one of the more well-thought-out aspects of OS X. Give me a link to a PDF, which Preview.app handles in wonderful fashion any day. 3) It would make a sweet browser plugin on browser-in-a-box platforms and other platforms that don't have a nice native implementation (which upon further reading seems to be the goal).
- RandallBrown 14y ago
  I think Firefox has been shipping with this for awhile to view PDFs. It may be an about:config value you have to turn on though.
  - qxcv 14y ago
    I only noticed it in FF15, but it may have been there for longer. Change pdfjs.disabled to false in about:config (followed by a browser restart) if you want to turn it on. Here's a test file[0] should you wish to test it out. I've been using pdf.js for a while on my Windows box (where it is enabled by default on the FF beta channel) and it has performed remarkably well. Sometimes it's a bit slower than Adobe Reader or messes up colour or formatting, but on the whole I've quite enjoyed using it. [0]: https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-design.pdf https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-des... Note that the text in [0] doesn't scale properly, and the page previews in the navigation pane just show garbled text. Usable, but only just.
    - SilasX 14y ago
      Sweet! (It voids the non-existent FF warranty though...) What's better is, it allows the (awesome) extension Pentadactyl to click the buttons in the viewer (since it's part of the browser). Have to click on (or tab to?) to the document itself though, in order to be able to use keyboard navigation on it though :-/
  - Argorak 14y ago
    It is included, but off in release versions at the moment. In about:config : name: pdfjs.disabled status: default type: boolean value: false
    - pucinators 14y ago
      I'm no usability expert, but to me it would make more sense to name that parameter "pdfjs.enabled" true/false
      - pilif 14y ago
        about:config isn't really optimized for usability and there's some advantage to the double negative in that the absence of a value could be treated as a false boolean value. So if at one point pdfjs should be enabled by default, they can just get rid of the preference in the default preferences file altogether instead of having to ship one where it says enabled: true (because absence of the value would be treated as false)
    - alter8 14y ago
      Does that mean I can just remove the Firefox extension installed from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pdfjs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pdfjs/ and then turn on this setting will enable a built-in PDF viewer?
  - JasonFruit 14y ago
    I've been using it for a few weeks now, and have noticed that it: - renders very well - is extremely slow on large documents with images, but pretty good with text-only ones - offers a more integrated experience than Adobe's plugin I think it's very promising, and I look forward to seeing it become more polished.
- Swizec 14y ago
  A few months after this was first shown on HN Chrome started shipping with a built-in pdf reader that looks exactly the same on both MacOS and Linux. I always assumed it was pdf.js
  - wlesieutre 14y ago
    I believe Chrome's pdf plugin is based on Foxit
  - fafner 14y ago
    No, Chrome has its own binary plugin. IIRC it is closed source and not available in Chromium. Pdf.js is developed by Mozilla and now shipped with Firefox and it works quite well so far.
    - esolyt 14y ago
      That's correct. I use Chromium on Arch Linux and it doesn't come with the proprietary pdf reader by default.
      - hey_lu 14y ago
        There is also a Google Chrome/Chromium extension also provided by the pdf.js team. (It's not in the webstore, though.) I've used it since about half a year and I like it a lot. (Not having to download PDFs all the time and having PDFs in tabs alongside the sites I read.)
        esolyt 14y ago
        I agree. Separate windows for PDFs is terrible. You can also separately download the proprietary PDF reader of Chrome and use it with Chromium. If you are using Arch Linux, it is available in the repositories.
      - mcrittenden 14y ago
        You said "by default" which is correct but just for the sake of completeness, the built in Chrome PDF reader can easily be added to Chromium on Arch using this package from the AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=44148 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=44148 I've been using it for almost a year now without issue.
- fafner 14y ago
  I found Preview.app always annoying. E.g., the maximize windows button not maximizing the window. Sure it is better than Adobe Reader. But there are quite a few very nice alternative PDF viewers better than it. And pdf.js is great as a browser plugin because opening PDFs won't disturb your browsing any more.
  - thomasfrank09 14y ago
    I agree about Preview - but mainly I just hate having to download PDFs to read them. Most of the time I don't need them long-term.
- crisnoble 14y ago
  Personally I wish all sites used this instead of scribd/slideshare or opening up external programs. This will just work on different browsers, different OS etc. Plus you can send links like this: http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html#page=6&zoom=121,0,599 http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html#page=6&... To send a user to s specific part of the page. Right now usually you just send the pdf link and have to say, "check out the image on page 6". Keeping the pdf in the browser and accessible to and from javascript opens up a world of possibilities.
  - harshadura 14y ago
    wow thats really useful!
  - geofft 14y ago
    > This will just work on different browsers, different OS etc. For values of "different" that mean "as long as they all have fast processors and accelerated JavaScript". I tried this in a non-Apple browser on my iPad, which means no JITted Javascript interpreter, and it basically hung. I haven't even attempted it on my smartphone, which does have a native PDF-reading application.
- pwenzel 14y ago
  How well does printing work when PDF.js handles the rendering?
- mistercow 14y ago
  >Give me a link to a PDF, which Preview.app handles in wonderful fashion any day. Really? I can't stand that. My download folder ends up cluttered with (inevitably weirdly named) PDF files. Worse, I suddenly am switching between programs and tabs, rather than just tabs, and the two programs have very different search interfaces (and Preview.app's is downright clumsy). Since I rarely look at a PDF if I'm not researching something, navigation and searching are really important considerations. I'm quite happy with the Chrome PDF viewer though.
  - jowiar 14y ago
    For me it put anything in my download folder. It opens in the browser in a reasonable, non-resource-abusive fashion. I'm on Safari 6/Mountain Lion, so I'm not sure what version this happened.
    - mistercow 14y ago
      OK, that's new in Mountain Lion apparently (Lion was the OS X that chased me away). I assumed it was the same as in previous versions since you mentioned Preview.app, but it appears that Preview.app isn't involved anymore when you open links in Safari; it just uses a built-in PDF viewer the same way Chrome does.
- chrismonsanto 14y ago
  I wouldn't say it's exceedingly well done... yet. It is so slow it is unusable on my OC'd core i5, and can't search pages you haven't looked at yet. The last one is a deal breaker for me. Really the only reason I use chrome for my day to day browser is for the PDF plugin. Once this project matures I'm out.
Mizza 14y ago
XSS injections on these are gonna be fun..
cpeterso 14y ago
Firefox already bundles the pdf.js reader. See https://bugzil.la/714712 https://bugzil.la/714712.
klr 14y ago
I have this error with Firefox 9.0.1: currentPage is undefined http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.js http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.js Line 285
- AndrewDucker 14y ago
  I'd go with "That's because any version of Firefox below 15 is unsupported".
- nnethercote 14y ago
  You should update to Firefox 15. It's better than 9, and secure too.
ianb 14y ago
I use this a lot, and it really does work. It renders everything, and renders it well. The one thing that doesn't work is maps – just too many vectors, and Javascript/Canvas/etc just can't keep up. Otherwise I'm very happy and don't feel nearly as much resentment towards PDFs as I used to.
- mrb 14y ago
  (I assume you are you mentally comparing pdf.js to Adobe Reader.) Have we reached the point where Adobe Reader is so resource-guzzling that people prefer a JavaScript (gasp!) PDF interpreter to Reader? Wow.
- fafner 14y ago
  Yes, I really love PDF.js. I was consider switching to Chrome just because of the (proprietary) pdf viewer. But the Chrome PDF viewer even lacks the concept of pages! I had already kicked out the Adobe Reader plugin but using an external viewer every time makes PDF just so more annoying. Mozilla is also working on something similar for Flash: https://github.com/mozilla/shumway https://github.com/mozilla/shumway . I'm a bit sceptical but with the success of PDF.js I can't wait to use it.
- IanDrake 14y ago
  Another Ian here, also using pdf.js. Been working on a paperless office app that allows contracts to be signed on an iPad. It works surprisingly well.
jpallen 14y ago
I'm really excited for this for http://www.sharelatex.com http://www.sharelatex.com and other similar sites that are actually generating a PDF for you. With native PDF viewers there is no way to interact with the viewer via javascript and even just having the viewer stay on the same page when your reload a document (with minor changes) is impossible. Pdf.js means that we'll be able to do this easily, as well as other cool things like letting letting the user sync between the PDF and source.
- jcheng 14y ago
  Our web-based IDE[1] does exactly this, including syncing between source and PDF, using PDF.js. Works great for the most part! [1] http://rstudio.org http://rstudio.org
  - jcfrei 14y ago
    nice, this is quite a sophisticated solution! have your heard of airxcell? they're doing something similar (with spreadsheets).
    - jcheng 14y ago
      Hadn't heard of airxcell, looks interesting. Thanks!
  - bpatrianakos 14y ago
    Are you guys actually generating PDFs from user input? If so, I'd be really interested in finding out how you do it if you don't mind sharing. I've found a number of apps that allow you to generate PDFs server side but often the installation is near impossible (dependency issues), e rendering is not good enough, or the API makes using it with a web app clunky. I did find a solution (don't recall the name) that actually used Webkit to render web pages and then turned them into PDFs but I was never able to get it to work in an app. It only seemed to work some of the time and only through ssh. But if you can't say, then I can respect that.
    - 14y ago
davedx 14y ago
The demo looks really impressive, well done. Adding this to my toolbox! :)
winter_blue 14y ago
I used to use PDF.js for a while (on Linux), until I switched to KParts because it was having difficulty rendering certain kinds of PDF documents. KParts uses the same underlying engine that powers Okular (KDE's default PDF reader.) It renders everything properly and is much faster than PDF.js. It reminded me of Foxit on Windows. KParts might be only available on Linux though...
Roritharr 14y ago
i've stumbled upon PDF.js a while ago because i was looking for js tool that allows me to extract data from pdfs... sadly i'm still looking for a good lib to do just that.
- mattdeboard 14y ago
  iText has a lot of tools for extracting info from PDFs. We use it extensively.
  - robodale 14y ago
    I have used iText(sharp) for several years. It works very well.
    - mattdeboard 14y ago
      Yeah we use the C# version as well, I've done some hacking on a Clojure wrapper around the java version. it's nontrivial :P
- dkhylan 14y ago
  If your looking for a web based API for manipulating PDF's, SaaSpose provide a commercially supported solution
- antman 14y ago
  Apache Tika. Works on many filetypes and languages.
chj 14y ago
This is amazing, but sadly slow.
- darkstalker 14y ago
  On linux, anything is better than that crappy 32-bit only propietary plugin that hangs the browser for a second every time I want to open a pdf file.
uams 14y ago
This is super cool. While I can't imagine myself using it anytime soon, it's clear that web applications are improving at a far faster rate then native applications and, with t large enough, the first derivative means that web will eclipse native. This seems like an academic exercise at the moment; it's to prove that you can replicate a native experience only. However, it seems that this could be vastly improved by playing to the strengths of the internet. The only online apps that have beat native ones so far have been because of cloud storage and collaboration. First, use filepicker.io or something so this can open my online files. Second, bake some collaboration into it.
- dkhylan 14y ago
  GroupDocs currently provide an app for online annotation and collaboration, including accessing your files from different cloud storage providers, currently Azure & Amazon S3 are supported http://groupdocs.com/apps/annotation/try-it-now http://groupdocs.com/apps/annotation/try-it-now
3ds 14y ago
On Firefox OS this will be the default PDF viewer.
tete 14y ago
Works nicely since it is Firefox's default viewer. No more need to install a one, yay!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
senko 14y ago
I have first seen this a year ago (when it was publicly announced, IIRC). It was a cute tech demo but easily broken, and quite slow. This ... is mind blowing.
wheaties 14y ago
Now if someone would just do this for .docx, .xlsx, and such I'd be set.
- crisnoble 14y ago
  Is there a way you could tell your browser to open those links in google docs by default?
  - emillon 14y ago
    Proxying all your documents to Google is something that should be avoidable.
    - crisnoble 14y ago
      True. And possibly undesirable depending on the sensitivity of the files.
  - wmf 14y ago
    Maybe Web Intents?
- dkhylan 14y ago
  GroupDocs provides a commercial online viewer and API's for supporting those formats as well as .pdf
  - crisnoble 14y ago
    That is awesome! link for the lazy: http://groupdocs.com/ http://groupdocs.com/
- retroguy 14y ago
  http://groupdocs.com/ http://groupdocs.com/ seems to cope with a whole bunch of file formats.
antonpug 14y ago
Sweet. Going to keep this in mind for when my site needs a pdf viewer. Awesome tool
famoreira 14y ago
This is pretty cool! Anyone knows if there is support for PDF annotations?
- hirenj 14y ago
  Looks like it has basic support for annotations, but is limited in its scope. I'm hoping I can use this to read annotations from PDFs so I can hook it into a journal paper reading/organisation workflow.
jjmanton 14y ago
from someone who has worked a lot with PDF, excellent work.
Aissen 14y ago
It's in Firefox since version Firefox 14, but disabled by default. Activable with "preview in Firefox" in options/filetypes/pdf.
thebigshane 14y ago
Two questions: 1) In Firefox 15, the demo page adds two new options to my right click menu: Rotate clockwise and Rotate Counter-clockwise. Is Firefox recognizing pdf.js (since it appears that they are related) or pdf.js adding menu options? I didn't know JS could do that. 2) Isn't Javascript an embeddable language inside PDFs? I'm pretty sure I read that javascript is used, not necessarily for animations but for run-time dynamic layouts. If that's true, is pdf.js "eval"-ing that javascript?
- evmar 14y ago
  HTML5 context menu API: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/interactive-elements.html#context-menus http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...
  - thebigshane 14y ago
    Thanks. I've seen custom contextmenus generated on pages[0] that override the built-in context menu but for some reason I've yet to come across a page[1] that adds to the existing context menu until today. [0] replacing example: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/menu/tablecontextmenu_source.html http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/menu/tablecontextmen... [1] appending example: https://bug617528.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=554309 https://bug617528.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=554...
    - notatoad 14y ago
      >but for some reason I've yet to come across a page that adds to the existing context menu until today. the reason is likely because browser compatibility for the context menu js api is pretty minimal [1]. firefox can use it on pages that are only going to be displayed in firefox, but for the internet at large it's pretty useless. [1]http://caniuse.com/menu http://caniuse.com/menu
      - bpatrianakos 14y ago
        What about Google Docs? Their context menu seems to work cross browser (even on ie9!). Maybe my assumption that they're using HTML5 for this is wrong but if I'm right then what you see on Gdocs is a complete replacement of the regular menu which is pretty cool but also quite annoying for me at times. Please correct me if I'm wrong (which is very likely).
mwexler 14y ago
I presume that copy to clipboard could be added to this as well, yes? Cool project.
leberwurstsaft 14y ago
On an iOS device with retina display it's awfully blurry, probably just not rendering to a big enough canvas.
- kerrishotts 14y ago
  Feels like they aren't taking window.devicePixelRatio into account so that they end up with a legitimately retina-sized canvas... My canvases were always blurry like this until I took dpr into account.
andrewla 14y ago
Just as interesting, in my mind, is the inverse library -- jspdf [1] lets you create pdfs in javascript. For automatic document generation, I find I can quickly whip something up in jsbin or jsfiddle that will give me a pdf I can download and do whatever I want with. [1] http://jspdf.com/ http://jspdf.com/
jrl 14y ago
This is great, I love it. I can read PDF files without leaving the browser, in any browser. I find it slightly distracting to switch to a third-party application.
dude8 14y ago
Good Job!!
gbraad 14y ago
Next up, a good ePub reader for use in firefox and firefoxos. Breaking free of the only two rendering engines in use...
- davidguetta222 14y ago
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bpatrianakos 14y ago
I came across this a few months ago while trying to implement a solution for turning HTML into PDFs server side. This is definitely cool and useful but it's usefulness is limited for now as native PDF readers on the desktop are preferable. Even on iOS the built in reader is nicely done. Chrome on Windows and Mac always opens PDFs in a tab and handles it well I think. That said, this can definitely be of use in Chromebook type situations. I'm sure it'll end up in Firefox OS too which I have hi expectations for. The awesome thing about Firefox OS is that it's all JavaScript and good old fashioned web technologies under the hood so this will fit right in. So alas, I'm still searching for an easy way to convert HTML to PDF server or client side. I haven't looked at the code yet but I do wonder if one could get that functionality out of this if they wrestled with it enough. (I know there are other ways to turn HTML to PDF but a client or server side script to do so really is the best solution for my situation).
- adityab 14y ago
  This is about PDF to HTML conversion.
  - bpatrianakos 14y ago
    Right, I got that. But when I found it I was hoping it could work in the opposite direction.

371 points by pykello 14y ago

As a big user of PDF.js, I have to say it's great for basic PDF documents. However, complex vectors don't render nicely with this

jowiar 14y ago

1) From a technical perspective, this is damn cool - exceedingly well done. Color me very impressed. 2) I hope I never actually see anyone using this on a website, attempting to make things "easier." Between Scribd and Slideshare, and Adobe trying to force its hideous crash-prone plugins into my browser, there are already enough people making a mess out of what is one of the more well-thought-out aspects of OS X. Give me a link to a PDF, which Preview.app handles in wonderful fashion any day. 3) It would make a sweet browser plugin on browser-in-a-box platforms and other platforms that don't have a nice native implementation (which upon further reading seems to be the goal).

RandallBrown 14y ago
I think Firefox has been shipping with this for awhile to view PDFs. It may be an about:config value you have to turn on though.
- qxcv 14y ago
  I only noticed it in FF15, but it may have been there for longer. Change pdfjs.disabled to false in about:config (followed by a browser restart) if you want to turn it on. Here's a test file[0] should you wish to test it out. I've been using pdf.js for a while on my Windows box (where it is enabled by default on the FF beta channel) and it has performed remarkably well. Sometimes it's a bit slower than Adobe Reader or messes up colour or formatting, but on the whole I've quite enjoyed using it. [0]: https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-design.pdf https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-des... Note that the text in [0] doesn't scale properly, and the page previews in the navigation pane just show garbled text. Usable, but only just.
  - SilasX 14y ago
    Sweet! (It voids the non-existent FF warranty though...) What's better is, it allows the (awesome) extension Pentadactyl to click the buttons in the viewer (since it's part of the browser). Have to click on (or tab to?) to the document itself though, in order to be able to use keyboard navigation on it though :-/
- Argorak 14y ago
  It is included, but off in release versions at the moment. In about:config : name: pdfjs.disabled status: default type: boolean value: false
  - pucinators 14y ago
    I'm no usability expert, but to me it would make more sense to name that parameter "pdfjs.enabled" true/false
    - pilif 14y ago
      about:config isn't really optimized for usability and there's some advantage to the double negative in that the absence of a value could be treated as a false boolean value. So if at one point pdfjs should be enabled by default, they can just get rid of the preference in the default preferences file altogether instead of having to ship one where it says enabled: true (because absence of the value would be treated as false)
  - alter8 14y ago
    Does that mean I can just remove the Firefox extension installed from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pdfjs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pdfjs/ and then turn on this setting will enable a built-in PDF viewer?
- JasonFruit 14y ago
  I've been using it for a few weeks now, and have noticed that it: - renders very well - is extremely slow on large documents with images, but pretty good with text-only ones - offers a more integrated experience than Adobe's plugin I think it's very promising, and I look forward to seeing it become more polished.
Swizec 14y ago
A few months after this was first shown on HN Chrome started shipping with a built-in pdf reader that looks exactly the same on both MacOS and Linux. I always assumed it was pdf.js
- wlesieutre 14y ago
  I believe Chrome's pdf plugin is based on Foxit
- fafner 14y ago
  No, Chrome has its own binary plugin. IIRC it is closed source and not available in Chromium. Pdf.js is developed by Mozilla and now shipped with Firefox and it works quite well so far.
  - esolyt 14y ago
    That's correct. I use Chromium on Arch Linux and it doesn't come with the proprietary pdf reader by default.
    - hey_lu 14y ago
      There is also a Google Chrome/Chromium extension also provided by the pdf.js team. (It's not in the webstore, though.) I've used it since about half a year and I like it a lot. (Not having to download PDFs all the time and having PDFs in tabs alongside the sites I read.)
      - esolyt 14y ago
        I agree. Separate windows for PDFs is terrible. You can also separately download the proprietary PDF reader of Chrome and use it with Chromium. If you are using Arch Linux, it is available in the repositories.
    - mcrittenden 14y ago
      You said "by default" which is correct but just for the sake of completeness, the built in Chrome PDF reader can easily be added to Chromium on Arch using this package from the AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=44148 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=44148 I've been using it for almost a year now without issue.
fafner 14y ago
I found Preview.app always annoying. E.g., the maximize windows button not maximizing the window. Sure it is better than Adobe Reader. But there are quite a few very nice alternative PDF viewers better than it. And pdf.js is great as a browser plugin because opening PDFs won't disturb your browsing any more.
- thomasfrank09 14y ago
  I agree about Preview - but mainly I just hate having to download PDFs to read them. Most of the time I don't need them long-term.
crisnoble 14y ago
Personally I wish all sites used this instead of scribd/slideshare or opening up external programs. This will just work on different browsers, different OS etc. Plus you can send links like this: http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html#page=6&zoom=121,0,599 http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html#page=6&... To send a user to s specific part of the page. Right now usually you just send the pdf link and have to say, "check out the image on page 6". Keeping the pdf in the browser and accessible to and from javascript opens up a world of possibilities.
- harshadura 14y ago
  wow thats really useful!
- geofft 14y ago
  > This will just work on different browsers, different OS etc. For values of "different" that mean "as long as they all have fast processors and accelerated JavaScript". I tried this in a non-Apple browser on my iPad, which means no JITted Javascript interpreter, and it basically hung. I haven't even attempted it on my smartphone, which does have a native PDF-reading application.
pwenzel 14y ago
How well does printing work when PDF.js handles the rendering?
mistercow 14y ago
>Give me a link to a PDF, which Preview.app handles in wonderful fashion any day. Really? I can't stand that. My download folder ends up cluttered with (inevitably weirdly named) PDF files. Worse, I suddenly am switching between programs and tabs, rather than just tabs, and the two programs have very different search interfaces (and Preview.app's is downright clumsy). Since I rarely look at a PDF if I'm not researching something, navigation and searching are really important considerations. I'm quite happy with the Chrome PDF viewer though.
- jowiar 14y ago
  For me it put anything in my download folder. It opens in the browser in a reasonable, non-resource-abusive fashion. I'm on Safari 6/Mountain Lion, so I'm not sure what version this happened.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    OK, that's new in Mountain Lion apparently (Lion was the OS X that chased me away). I assumed it was the same as in previous versions since you mentioned Preview.app, but it appears that Preview.app isn't involved anymore when you open links in Safari; it just uses a built-in PDF viewer the same way Chrome does.
chrismonsanto 14y ago
I wouldn't say it's exceedingly well done... yet. It is so slow it is unusable on my OC'd core i5, and can't search pages you haven't looked at yet. The last one is a deal breaker for me. Really the only reason I use chrome for my day to day browser is for the PDF plugin. Once this project matures I'm out.

Mizza 14y ago

XSS injections on these are gonna be fun..

cpeterso 14y ago

Firefox already bundles the pdf.js reader. See https://bugzil.la/714712 https://bugzil.la/714712.

klr 14y ago

I have this error with Firefox 9.0.1: currentPage is undefined http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.js http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.js Line 285

AndrewDucker 14y ago
I'd go with "That's because any version of Firefox below 15 is unsupported".
nnethercote 14y ago
You should update to Firefox 15. It's better than 9, and secure too.

ianb 14y ago

I use this a lot, and it really does work. It renders everything, and renders it well. The one thing that doesn't work is maps – just too many vectors, and Javascript/Canvas/etc just can't keep up. Otherwise I'm very happy and don't feel nearly as much resentment towards PDFs as I used to.

mrb 14y ago
(I assume you are you mentally comparing pdf.js to Adobe Reader.) Have we reached the point where Adobe Reader is so resource-guzzling that people prefer a JavaScript (gasp!) PDF interpreter to Reader? Wow.
fafner 14y ago
Yes, I really love PDF.js. I was consider switching to Chrome just because of the (proprietary) pdf viewer. But the Chrome PDF viewer even lacks the concept of pages! I had already kicked out the Adobe Reader plugin but using an external viewer every time makes PDF just so more annoying. Mozilla is also working on something similar for Flash: https://github.com/mozilla/shumway https://github.com/mozilla/shumway . I'm a bit sceptical but with the success of PDF.js I can't wait to use it.
IanDrake 14y ago
Another Ian here, also using pdf.js. Been working on a paperless office app that allows contracts to be signed on an iPad. It works surprisingly well.

jpallen 14y ago

I'm really excited for this for http://www.sharelatex.com http://www.sharelatex.com and other similar sites that are actually generating a PDF for you. With native PDF viewers there is no way to interact with the viewer via javascript and even just having the viewer stay on the same page when your reload a document (with minor changes) is impossible. Pdf.js means that we'll be able to do this easily, as well as other cool things like letting letting the user sync between the PDF and source.

jcheng 14y ago
Our web-based IDE[1] does exactly this, including syncing between source and PDF, using PDF.js. Works great for the most part! [1] http://rstudio.org http://rstudio.org
- jcfrei 14y ago
  nice, this is quite a sophisticated solution! have your heard of airxcell? they're doing something similar (with spreadsheets).
  - jcheng 14y ago
    Hadn't heard of airxcell, looks interesting. Thanks!
- bpatrianakos 14y ago
  Are you guys actually generating PDFs from user input? If so, I'd be really interested in finding out how you do it if you don't mind sharing. I've found a number of apps that allow you to generate PDFs server side but often the installation is near impossible (dependency issues), e rendering is not good enough, or the API makes using it with a web app clunky. I did find a solution (don't recall the name) that actually used Webkit to render web pages and then turned them into PDFs but I was never able to get it to work in an app. It only seemed to work some of the time and only through ssh. But if you can't say, then I can respect that.
  - 14y ago

davedx 14y ago

The demo looks really impressive, well done. Adding this to my toolbox! :)

winter_blue 14y ago

I used to use PDF.js for a while (on Linux), until I switched to KParts because it was having difficulty rendering certain kinds of PDF documents. KParts uses the same underlying engine that powers Okular (KDE's default PDF reader.) It renders everything properly and is much faster than PDF.js. It reminded me of Foxit on Windows. KParts might be only available on Linux though...

Roritharr 14y ago

i've stumbled upon PDF.js a while ago because i was looking for js tool that allows me to extract data from pdfs... sadly i'm still looking for a good lib to do just that.

mattdeboard 14y ago
iText has a lot of tools for extracting info from PDFs. We use it extensively.
- robodale 14y ago
  I have used iText(sharp) for several years. It works very well.
  - mattdeboard 14y ago
    Yeah we use the C# version as well, I've done some hacking on a Clojure wrapper around the java version. it's nontrivial :P
dkhylan 14y ago
If your looking for a web based API for manipulating PDF's, SaaSpose provide a commercially supported solution
antman 14y ago
Apache Tika. Works on many filetypes and languages.

chj 14y ago

This is amazing, but sadly slow.

darkstalker 14y ago
On linux, anything is better than that crappy 32-bit only propietary plugin that hangs the browser for a second every time I want to open a pdf file.

uams 14y ago

This is super cool. While I can't imagine myself using it anytime soon, it's clear that web applications are improving at a far faster rate then native applications and, with t large enough, the first derivative means that web will eclipse native. This seems like an academic exercise at the moment; it's to prove that you can replicate a native experience only. However, it seems that this could be vastly improved by playing to the strengths of the internet. The only online apps that have beat native ones so far have been because of cloud storage and collaboration. First, use filepicker.io or something so this can open my online files. Second, bake some collaboration into it.

dkhylan 14y ago
GroupDocs currently provide an app for online annotation and collaboration, including accessing your files from different cloud storage providers, currently Azure & Amazon S3 are supported http://groupdocs.com/apps/annotation/try-it-now http://groupdocs.com/apps/annotation/try-it-now

3ds 14y ago

On Firefox OS this will be the default PDF viewer.

tete 14y ago

Works nicely since it is Firefox's default viewer. No more need to install a one, yay!

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

senko 14y ago

I have first seen this a year ago (when it was publicly announced, IIRC). It was a cute tech demo but easily broken, and quite slow. This ... is mind blowing.

wheaties 14y ago

Now if someone would just do this for .docx, .xlsx, and such I'd be set.

crisnoble 14y ago
Is there a way you could tell your browser to open those links in google docs by default?
- emillon 14y ago
  Proxying all your documents to Google is something that should be avoidable.
  - crisnoble 14y ago
    True. And possibly undesirable depending on the sensitivity of the files.
- wmf 14y ago
  Maybe Web Intents?
dkhylan 14y ago
GroupDocs provides a commercial online viewer and API's for supporting those formats as well as .pdf
- crisnoble 14y ago
  That is awesome! link for the lazy: http://groupdocs.com/ http://groupdocs.com/
retroguy 14y ago
http://groupdocs.com/ http://groupdocs.com/ seems to cope with a whole bunch of file formats.

antonpug 14y ago

Sweet. Going to keep this in mind for when my site needs a pdf viewer. Awesome tool

famoreira 14y ago

This is pretty cool! Anyone knows if there is support for PDF annotations?

hirenj 14y ago
Looks like it has basic support for annotations, but is limited in its scope. I'm hoping I can use this to read annotations from PDFs so I can hook it into a journal paper reading/organisation workflow.

jjmanton 14y ago

from someone who has worked a lot with PDF, excellent work.

Aissen 14y ago

It's in Firefox since version Firefox 14, but disabled by default. Activable with "preview in Firefox" in options/filetypes/pdf.

thebigshane 14y ago

Two questions: 1) In Firefox 15, the demo page adds two new options to my right click menu: Rotate clockwise and Rotate Counter-clockwise. Is Firefox recognizing pdf.js (since it appears that they are related) or pdf.js adding menu options? I didn't know JS could do that. 2) Isn't Javascript an embeddable language inside PDFs? I'm pretty sure I read that javascript is used, not necessarily for animations but for run-time dynamic layouts. If that's true, is pdf.js "eval"-ing that javascript?

evmar 14y ago
HTML5 context menu API: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/interactive-elements.html#context-menus http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...
- thebigshane 14y ago
  Thanks. I've seen custom contextmenus generated on pages[0] that override the built-in context menu but for some reason I've yet to come across a page[1] that adds to the existing context menu until today. [0] replacing example: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/menu/tablecontextmenu_source.html http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/menu/tablecontextmen... [1] appending example: https://bug617528.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=554309 https://bug617528.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=554...
  - notatoad 14y ago
    >but for some reason I've yet to come across a page that adds to the existing context menu until today. the reason is likely because browser compatibility for the context menu js api is pretty minimal [1]. firefox can use it on pages that are only going to be displayed in firefox, but for the internet at large it's pretty useless. [1]http://caniuse.com/menu http://caniuse.com/menu
    - bpatrianakos 14y ago
      What about Google Docs? Their context menu seems to work cross browser (even on ie9!). Maybe my assumption that they're using HTML5 for this is wrong but if I'm right then what you see on Gdocs is a complete replacement of the regular menu which is pretty cool but also quite annoying for me at times. Please correct me if I'm wrong (which is very likely).

mwexler 14y ago

I presume that copy to clipboard could be added to this as well, yes? Cool project.

leberwurstsaft 14y ago

On an iOS device with retina display it's awfully blurry, probably just not rendering to a big enough canvas.

kerrishotts 14y ago
Feels like they aren't taking window.devicePixelRatio into account so that they end up with a legitimately retina-sized canvas... My canvases were always blurry like this until I took dpr into account.

andrewla 14y ago

Just as interesting, in my mind, is the inverse library -- jspdf [1] lets you create pdfs in javascript. For automatic document generation, I find I can quickly whip something up in jsbin or jsfiddle that will give me a pdf I can download and do whatever I want with. [1] http://jspdf.com/ http://jspdf.com/

jrl 14y ago

This is great, I love it. I can read PDF files without leaving the browser, in any browser. I find it slightly distracting to switch to a third-party application.

dude8 14y ago

Good Job!!

gbraad 14y ago

Next up, a good ePub reader for use in firefox and firefoxos. Breaking free of the only two rendering engines in use...

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bpatrianakos 14y ago

I came across this a few months ago while trying to implement a solution for turning HTML into PDFs server side. This is definitely cool and useful but it's usefulness is limited for now as native PDF readers on the desktop are preferable. Even on iOS the built in reader is nicely done. Chrome on Windows and Mac always opens PDFs in a tab and handles it well I think. That said, this can definitely be of use in Chromebook type situations. I'm sure it'll end up in Firefox OS too which I have hi expectations for. The awesome thing about Firefox OS is that it's all JavaScript and good old fashioned web technologies under the hood so this will fit right in. So alas, I'm still searching for an easy way to convert HTML to PDF server or client side. I haven't looked at the code yet but I do wonder if one could get that functionality out of this if they wrestled with it enough. (I know there are other ways to turn HTML to PDF but a client or server side script to do so really is the best solution for my situation).

adityab 14y ago
This is about PDF to HTML conversion.
- bpatrianakos 14y ago
  Right, I got that. But when I found it I was hoping it could work in the opposite direction.