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Dumb question: What's to stop Chrome from eventually adopting PDF.js? Personally, I see that as the future. Its open source, its "good enough", and Google doe

Dumb question: What's to stop Chrome from eventually adopting PDF.js? Personally, I see that as the future. Its open source, its "good enough", and Google doesn't have to license the pdf viewer anymore. Also it's a big coup against Adobe, when everyone with firefox and chrome can pretty much uninstall your Adobe Reader software. I haven't even mentioned shrinking the market on 3rd party PDF viewers.

nephyrin 14y ago
Nothing! pdf.js is already a part of the Octane benchmark and works well in chrome: http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html Mozilla is about moving the web forward, not just beating the other guy, so I don't imagine there'd be any gripe with Google picking up pdf.js in chrome.
fafner 14y ago
There is already a Chromium plugin for pdf.js available. I hope Google starts using pdf.js so far it's better than the Chrome pdf viewer except for the startup time.
keeperofdakeys 14y ago
A lot of people are under the misconception that Firefox and Chrome are rivals, but the opposite is the case. They both have the motto of "furthering the web", however you want to interpret it. As for Reader, Adobe probably don't really care if others come along. Acrobat is the main product, and the fact that other PDF readers exist just gives people more reason to buy it. PDF is also an incredibly large specification, full of crazy features, and I think Reader might be the only one that implements all of this functionality.
Millennium 14y ago
Nothing stops Chrome, or even IE, from adopting PDF.js. Not even the license (Apache). Personally, I'd like to see it happen.
pifflesnort 14y ago
That depends on whether they think it mathes the native implementation in compatibility, performance, and price. My hope is that they wouldn't replace the current implementation simply because the JS implementation is free, and the JS implementation is never going to be as fast as an effecient native implementation, and its always going to be more difficult to write.

nephyrin 14y ago

Nothing! pdf.js is already a part of the Octane benchmark and works well in chrome: http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html Mozilla is about moving the web forward, not just beating the other guy, so I don't imagine there'd be any gripe with Google picking up pdf.js in chrome.

fafner 14y ago

There is already a Chromium plugin for pdf.js available. I hope Google starts using pdf.js so far it's better than the Chrome pdf viewer except for the startup time.

keeperofdakeys 14y ago

A lot of people are under the misconception that Firefox and Chrome are rivals, but the opposite is the case. They both have the motto of "furthering the web", however you want to interpret it. As for Reader, Adobe probably don't really care if others come along. Acrobat is the main product, and the fact that other PDF readers exist just gives people more reason to buy it. PDF is also an incredibly large specification, full of crazy features, and I think Reader might be the only one that implements all of this functionality.

Millennium 14y ago

Nothing stops Chrome, or even IE, from adopting PDF.js. Not even the license (Apache). Personally, I'd like to see it happen.

pifflesnort 14y ago

That depends on whether they think it mathes the native implementation in compatibility, performance, and price. My hope is that they wouldn't replace the current implementation simply because the JS implementation is free, and the JS implementation is never going to be as fast as an effecient native implementation, and its always going to be more difficult to write.