Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Meet Firefox's Built-In PDF Reader

Posted by timothy on from the must-include-web-browser dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Not long ago, Mozilla coders announced that they were starting to build PDF.js, a way to display Acrobat documents in the browser using pure web code. No longer will you have to fight with an external PDF plug-in in Firefox. Development on PDF.js has progressed to the point now where you can take an early peek at it. Huzzah!"

4 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good by bazald · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But it's not increasing the attack surface at all. If it's pure javascript, the interpreter is already there anyway. Any attack on PDF.js would exist in the interpreter independently of PDF.js. In fact, this reduces the attack surface by requiring one less program to accept arbitrary data from the network.

    --
    Insert self-referential sig here.
  2. Re:Good by Shoe+Puppet · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Mozilla Firefox, Javascript interprets PDF!

    --
    (+1, Disagree)
  3. Depends on what "features" Firefox enables by knorthern+knight · · Score: 5, Insightful

    PDF started out as "Portable Display Format" that showed you what a document would look like if you sent it to a decent printer.. If it had stayed that way, it would be ideal. Unfortunately Adobe succumbed to the Microsoft/Mozilla "features disease". The "latest greatest" versions now support javascript, live URLs that you can click and go to. And then there's "/launch" (it's not a security hole, it's a feature). Not to mention support for schlockwave trash.

    Over the years people have complained about how every new version of Adobe Reader is more bloated, and takes longer to load than its predecessor. If Firefox offers a lightweight PDF ***READER***, I'm all for it. But puhlease, not all the stupid features in Adobe's version. Speaking of versions, the one feature I strongly suggest is that Mozilla allows its PDF engine to lie about what it is. Just like asshole webdesigners who hardcode Internet-Explorer-only into their web pages, I'm sure there are idiots who hardcode their webpages to only allow Adobe Reader above a certain version to access their PDF documents.

    --

    I'm not repeating myself
    I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
  4. Re:How about eradicating PDFs instead? by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    PDFs are great for scientific papers. The equations and footnotes are formatted correctly, I can cross reference 30 or 40 pages at once, without trying to click back and forth through ad laden pages, and I can see two pages at once on my wide screen monitor, or go back to a single page if I want to make Preview.app's window smaller.

    The alternatives based on Flash are horrible-- the anti-aliasing is subpar, the window can't be resized and so on.