Firefox One Step Closer to Built-in PDF Reader
Firefox One Step Closer to Built-in PDF Reader
Posted 10/28/2011 at 11:50pm
| by Pulkit Chanda
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Soon after Mozilla was done with the release of Firefox 4, it launched an effort to develop an in-browser PDF viewer built entirely in HTML5 and JavaScript. While the ultimate aim of the project was, and still is, to make PDF.js an integral part of Firefox, the team working on the project has released the reader as a restart-free extension.
PDF.js has a fairly simple user interface. All its features, save for one, can be accessed from the bar at the top. These include the ability to move between pages, zoom in/out, print, download, and open local PDFs. Page thumbnails, however, are not visible until you move the cursor over to the extreme left of the screen.
Being a “community-driven and -governed open-source project,” it is open to contributions from absolutely anyone. If you think you are that anyone, you can download the source code from GitHub.
Image Credit: Geek
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gmvolk
October 30, 2011 at 7:41pm
Can it be turned off, or completely removed if I don't want it? I personnaly prefer to download PDFs and read them offline. Much faster than PDF inside a browser, and I have a local copy to reference latter. I hate the PDF in chrome, very hard to save it(unless that has been fixed, have not touch chrome in awhile). I only use SumatraPDF and find it to be very quick even when I do allow it to open in firefox.
Zoandar
October 30, 2011 at 8:20am
Great idea. You might as well weigh it down even more with non-essential things so it becomes even more of a resource hog. It's days of being light and quick ended with the half-baked-release program.
illusionslayer
October 30, 2011 at 8:58am
See, the problem with that logic is that pdf.js won't constantly be running. Can you imagine if every bit of code that the browser might possibly need at any point in the future was always running?
MleB
October 30, 2011 at 6:19am
I've already got a in-browser PDF reader as apart of my installed Foxit Reader, so no real need of added bloat.
Meanwhile, with only a few Add-Ons installed with the current FF, its such a resource hog that I do keep an eye on the 'others' in the hope that they'll offer same for a lot less strain. None quite do. Yet.
illusionslayer
October 30, 2011 at 9:05am
PDF.js will be ligther and faster so it would readily replace Foxit reader which is considerably more bloated.
With 20 addons installed and 5 running my firefox hangs out from 300-550mb of ram depending on usage and how long it's been running. I don't know about you, but I didn't buy this ram so that I could let it loaf around and not get used.
Holly Golightly
October 30, 2011 at 1:17am
I heart FireFox and their lovely add-ons. A PDF reader is more than welcomed on my end.
Jeffredo
October 29, 2011 at 6:18pm
Now if they would just get rid of the TDR errors that I've been plagued with since Firefox 7 was released. Windows 7, Firefox 7 and Nvidia are not a happy combo. I'll be using Opera until they do.
Scatter
October 29, 2011 at 10:01am
Why do we need a PDF reader built into the browser when we can just install a reader IF we need one? It just seems is if it's going to add unecessary bloat to the standard browser.
Neel Chauhan
October 29, 2011 at 1:11pm
Some day I need to uninstall Firefox because it's a big memory hog and will become a bigger memory hog with stuff like this.
illusionslayer
October 29, 2011 at 11:10am
Why install a browser at all if you can just use IE?
Better yet install linux and wget everything.
Scatter
October 29, 2011 at 12:02pm
Personal preference. That has always been the interest in Firefox for me. It's light and basic out of the box but IF you need additional functionality it can always be added later and from the source of your choosing. So now i'm going to have a Firefox that used more resources out of the box whether I want to read PDFs or not.
illusionslayer
October 30, 2011 at 2:22am
So rather than be happy that you no longer have to go get a several MB PDF reader that hasn't been updated in quite awhile, you'd rather complain about something that will add almost nothing to the size of firefox and do nothing but improve the overall Firefox experience.
It's not going to slow down the browser. You won't even notice it there until you go to read a PDF.
Do you compain about the fact that it includes HTML5 compatibilty? No? How about hardware acceleration? Any of the hundreds of features that are hidden behind the scenes?
Scatter
October 30, 2011 at 9:16am
HTML5 compatibility is pretty much essential for a web browser. A built in pdf reader isn't. Again, isn't this what Firefox has addons for?
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