Mozilla’s pdf.js is an open source project that would render PDF files using HTML 5 and Javascript. The project has just reached milestone-1.
Except for Google Chrome, many browsers haven’t been rendering PDF files right inside the browser. But now, Mozilla’s folks has come up with an innovative way to render pdf files with the help of HTML 5 and Javascript. This new project aims at rendering, drawing and blit the images over on the screen that’s on the PDF with HTML 5.
There are a lot of complexities in rendering PDF with native HTML 5 and Javascript. This involves using almost all available SVG APIs. I saw the code and it is just confusing.
Here are some of the important features that this pdf.js will bring to us:
- Render PDF without any plugin
- Built-in forms
- Built-in interactive elements like videos, interactive forms
- Access to HTML 5 elements right inside PDF
- Has a trusted code base.
The project has reached milestone 1 and now provides some basic PDF functionalists. It successfully renders the text right now. You can take a look at the demo here. The project is making some serious progress and has been licensed under 3-clause BSD license. The license is so liberal and is almost open source. The project will soon be a community based project.
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The project has reached version 0.2 and will make progress in making a Firefox extension. The security is also taken care of since it uses only native code pieces which are web safe.
[add_button position=”Float left” link=”https://github.com/andreasgal/pdf.js”] Contribute to pdf.js [/add_button] [add_button colour=”green” position=”Float left” link=”http://karthikk.net/projects/pdfjs/web/viewer.html”] Demo [/add_button]