Firefox introduces PDF viewer
blog.mozilla.org
Firefox introduces PDF viewer
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Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer
#2Is this based on pdf.js? I couldn't seem to find out quickly. If so, very cool!
Edit: I was being lazy, it definitely is. Very nice that it's plugin-free and a pure HTML5 solution.
Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer
#3Why is this news except the fact that Chrome has had this for years? Was Adobe paying Mozilla in the same way that Google paid them for the search bar preference?
Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer
#4The experience on Android phones is solid but this core feature is really late to the game.
I love firefox but cant keep using a browser thats always playing catch-up
Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer
#5Why is this news except the fact that Chrome has had this for years? Was Adobe paying Mozilla in the same way that Google paid them for the search bar preference?
I think the point is (from my other comment) this doesn't use a plugin, so is more secure (no Adobe security problems). It's based on pdf.js if you want to find out more.
Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer
#6Love it, but unlike Chrome's embedded PDF reader, it can't "stream" PDFs (a dealbreaker for people viewing media-heavy PDFs on slower connections)
Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer
#7Why is this news except the fact that Chrome has had this for years? Was Adobe paying Mozilla in the same way that Google paid them for the search bar preference?
Chrome's support is based on a licensed copy of FoxIt reader that they bundle in their binary. This also means that Chromium doesn't support it. The Firefox one is all open-source, as well as being based on pdf.js.
Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer
#8The experience on Android phones is solid but this core feature is really late to the game. I love firefox but cant keep using a browser thats always playing catch-up
I really like Chrome and use it when developing just for webkit inspector but I can't switch to it for regular browsing as I still feel like Chrome can't match the browsing experience of FF. For example:
Tab Management
In firefox I can much more easily have dozens of tags without them all becoming squished. Instead I get scroll bars and a drop down menu.
With tab mix plus, tabs which I haven't read yet are highlighted.
I also have a close tabs to the left option in the context menu (which I really love).
Adverts
Adblock in firefox seems to be much more stable than the chrome alternative and just does a better job generally of blocking adverts. (This one might be solved by the likes of privoxy but then I lose the tight integration with the browser.)
Password Management
I'm a regular user of last pass but in chrome it can't integrate with the http auth dialog which means I'm forced to open up my vault and copy and paste my credential manually which is a huge hassle.
I really like Chrome and I'd love to use it all the time but these things (and a few others) prevent me from doing so. Does anyone know if there are any chrome extensions which address these issues?
Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer
#9It's worth pointing out this is done in pure Javascript, and works by compiling PDF functions to equivalent Javascript functions which are then visible to Firefox's JIT. Despite being only around a year old, it still manages to render the majority of PDFs thrown at it (it's been my primary paper reader for the past 6 months or so).
As for missing features like some complex gradients, I can't say I've missed them, except on occasion when dealing with shiny PR materials. Earlier versions occasionally emitted blank pages, but these could always be skipped thanks to a side effect of the PDF format.
PDF.js has an amazing future for such a young project, and it is the foremost demonstration of exactly how complex programming tasks can be expressed using native web technologies. Turns out 35kLOC of Javascript almost completely subsumes the functionality of a behemoth native application (Adobe Reader) that on some machines would require half a minute just to 'boot'.
While Mozilla are pumping out stellar designs like this, Google are pushing crap like Native Client and their proprietary, binary-only Foxit Reader solution instead, complete with the hundreds of thousands of LOC of insecure C this entails. Rock on, Mozilla!
Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer
#10Why is this news except the fact that Chrome has had this for years? Was Adobe paying Mozilla in the same way that Google paid them for the search bar preference?
Adobe was not paying Mozilla for anything like that. Chrome simply includes a paid closed-source product (FoxIt, iirc). This was and is not an option for Mozilla for multiple reasons.
It took Mozilla a while to get here, which is unfortunate, but the result is an open-source PDF reader that doesn't add yet another binary rendering engine to the browser (think security, hack-ability). Creating it made Gecko and the web platform better, because it pushed us. There is more work to do, but it's a great start and a welcome change to how these features are implemented.
A bit more info in a blog post that I wrote:
https://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/exciting-st...