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Firefox introduces PDF viewer

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#111

Post by kzrdude »

jonknee wrote: post #95
snotrockets wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome's PDF plugin is closed source, and written in C. It is very useful, but not free as in FOSS.

That has nothing to do with anything. If you're just having a dick measuring contest, Google has contributed a ton to the open source community. Google also provides nearly 100% of funding for Mozilla.

Open source is not about smelly dicks, it's about transparency, reusability, philsophy, politics. It's a lot of things (and they matter, because right now, society and technology are changing fast).

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#112

Post by shmerl »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #50
shmerl wrote: post #29

It's nice to have such an option, but it feels significantly less snappy than Kparts plugin in KDE which wraps Okular into Firefox.

True, as with plain Adobe Reader. I spend a large part of my day reading .PDFs, both in and out of my browser, and Firefox became a much less effective "power tool" when they took the liberty of disabling the Reader plugin. I couldn't care less how long it takes to load a .PDF -- snappy rendering and navigation is everything, and you don't get that from JavaScript. It took a surprising (to me) amount of hacking to re…

It didn't take me much hacking to enable native PDF plugin back. Searching in about:config for "pdf" quickly revealed pdfjs.disabled setting, which I set to true - and that's it.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#113

Post by mccr8 »

cynwoody wrote: post #106
hosay123 wrote: post #9

It'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, ex…

> 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. Given how well PDF.js runs using Mozilla's JS engine, I have to wonder how well it would perform with V8.

You can try it out for yourself here by loading this URL with Chrome: http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#114

Post by recoiledsnake »

jonknee wrote: post #95
snotrockets wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome's PDF plugin is closed source, and written in C. It is very useful, but not free as in FOSS.

That has nothing to do with anything. If you're just having a dick measuring contest, Google has contributed a ton to the open source community. Google also provides nearly 100% of funding for Mozilla.

I am not against your main point but I am sure that Microsoft will provide at least 110% of funding if Google pulled their "funding".

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#115

Post by LeonidasXIV »

siddhant wrote: post #81
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being closed source matters to some people. You might not be one of them, but other people might have different perspectives that cause them to value an open source option above a closed source equivalent.

Yes but the masses don't care if it's open or closed source.

No, but we should. For the masses that don't.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#116

Post by mehrzad »

jonknee wrote: post #96
jlongster wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a matter of open/closed source. Bundling in yet another C binary is only going to widen the surface area for security vulnerabilities for millions of people, and there's really not a great reason to do so anymore. PDF.js proves that it's possible to write high-performance javascript to do this stuff, without introducing any security risks and it's completely cross-platform. Computers are only going to g…

But Chrome's works better and has been around (and useful for millions) for years. Perhaps they'll move to a JS solution in the future, but if I had to choose between the two right now I'd take the faster more complete one.

>But Chrome's works Citation needed, pdf.js has performed better for me personally than Chrome's viewer.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#117

Post by comex »

comex wrote: post #93
twoodfin wrote: post #43

If you want to try PDF.js from your current browser, here's a demo: http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html I wonder what's keeping this so ugly in Chrome. Also, does anyone know if printing is intended to work? It doesn't appear to have the pagination right, again at least on Chrome.

Almost bearable in MobileSafari on my iPhone. Almost... well, I guess the limiting factors are mostly under Apple's control, not pdf.js's.

Self-reply: judging by its performance in desktop Safari versus other browsers, this is really the fault of Apple's (closed source, so I can't really properly diagnose) rendering code - the other browsers performed much better.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#118

Post by wslh »

hosay123 wrote: post #9

It'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, ex…

Yes but native client is conceptually an excellent and secure way to run native code.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#119

Post by nephyrin »

eumenides1 wrote: post #108

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.

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

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.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#120

Post by nephyrin »

Create wrote: post #46

...and it displays your visited sites in a grand panorama on the canvas in a new tab, despite having asked for always private browsing. It could be a regression of both the browser, and the unit test, which isn't such a good news.

If this is the case for you please file a bug - a lot of private browsing changes have been occurring under the hood in preparation for proper per-window private browsing in FF21, so it's very possible a regression snuck in :(
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