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Firefox introduces PDF viewer

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Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#141

Post by benaiah »

iso-8859-1 wrote: post #130
benaiah wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that would be Java.

Source? I don't believe this since so many levels of confirmation is required. I think the biggest source is the simple links to "KimKSexTape.jpg.exe".

Source: http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2012/Oracle_Java_s... (Chrome uses its own PDF system, not Adobe Reader, so it's not even close to the threat level of Java).

Java has had multiple drive-by exploits discovered in just the past few months, which by definition don't require confirmation.

I was inaccurate, however. Java is almost certainly the cause of most exploits, but I daresay that user inexperience (to put it kindly) is probably the source of most infections. Touchè.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#142

Post by est »

snotrockets wrote: post #56
jonknee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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! Why are you dumping on Google? Their browser has been able to handle PDFs for years (including forms!).

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

Chrome's built-in PDF plugin is actually from a Chinese company called Foxit.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-chromes-pdf-...

Now start China bitching.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#143

Post by lkbm »

cooldeal wrote: post #128
natrius wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Microsoft were willing to provide pay as much or more, why aren't they doing it already to make Bing the default search engine?

Perhaps they had made an offer. We never would know. We don't even know the details of the Mozilla-Google deal. For all the openness that Google and Mozilla appear to proffer, the agreement between them is a secret.

Mozilla has been saying for years that they will use the best engine, and take that engine's money if it's available. If Bing were clearly better than Google, they'd switch and be taking Microsoft's money.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#144

Post by keeperofdakeys »

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.

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.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#145

Post by simonster »

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.

For the average end user, it may not particularly matter that Mozilla's PDF implementation is open source and Google's isn't. However, for people like me who want to implement PDF-related functionality in their web/desktop application, it matters a great deal.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#146

Post by alok-g »

johansch wrote: post #11

It fails with the 4th google hit for "sample pdf": http://www.inkwelleditorial.com/pdfSample.pdf (The main difference I see with Firefox 19 on win7 is that it loads pages significantly faster.)

I had dedicated PDF plugin installed [1]. They had no reason to switch to Firefox-native PDF rendering as the default for PDFs before getting some maturity to it. The very first PDF I encountered [2] won't render fine in it though it does very well in the dedicated PDF application [1].

[1] http://www.certifiedmastertech.com/1410/mechanicssecretspdf1... [2] http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#147

Post by cpeterso »

alok-g wrote: post #146
johansch wrote: post #11

It fails with the 4th google hit for "sample pdf": http://www.inkwelleditorial.com/pdfSample.pdf (The main difference I see with Firefox 19 on win7 is that it loads pages significantly faster.)

I had dedicated PDF plugin installed [1]. They had no reason to switch to Firefox-native PDF rendering as the default for PDFs before getting some maturity to it. The very first PDF I encountered [2] won't render fine in it though it does very well in the dedicated PDF application [1]. [1] http://www.certifiedmastertech.com/1410/mechanicssecretspdf1... [2] http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer

What rendering problem do you see with the "mechanics' secrets" PDF? AFAICT, it looks fine with Firefox 22 on OSX. What OS and Firefox version are you using?

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#149

Post by stcredzero »

jonknee wrote: post #98
stcredzero wrote: post #44

I would love to have a PDF viewer app for OS X based on PDF.js. Better still if it could be sandboxed and have other enhanced security. Just tried out Firefox 19, and the PDF reader is good. Responsive enough, with just the barest hint of render lag. Minor nit: Firefox isn't currently registered as handling PDF, but will still open it happily. EDIT: I have Firefox as my OS X Mountain Lion's PDF viewer app now. Works…

Any particular reason? OS X natively supports PDFs (and is both much faster and more complete than pdf.js).

Preview has had a history of security holes. PDF.js would at least be immune to buffer overflow exploits.

Re: Firefox introduces PDF viewer

#150

Post by jedbrown »

jonknee wrote: post #45
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. Rock on, Mozilla! Why are you dumping on Google? Their browser has been able to handle PDFs for years (including forms!).

Google's PDF viewer refuses to save PDFs opened via the websites of some scientific journals. I'm not willing to play the proxy game every time I want to read journal papers so I save them locally. I stopped using Google's PDF viewer because of this misfeature.
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