Firefox introduces PDF viewer

It's worth pointing out this is done in <i>pure Javascript</i>, 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).<p>As for missing features like some complex gradients, I can't say I've missed them, except on occasion when dealing with shiny PR materials. Earlier versions occasionally emitted blank pages, but these could always be skipped thanks to a side effect of the PDF format.<p>PDF.js has an amazing future for such a young project, and it is <i>the</i> foremost demonstration of exactly how complex programming tasks can be expressed using native web technologies. Turns out 35kLOC of Javascript almost completely subsumes the functionality of a behemoth native application (Adobe Reader) that on some machines would require half a minute just to 'boot'.<p>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!

If you want to try PDF.js from your current browser, here's a demo:<p><a href="http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html" rel="nofollow">http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.html</a><p>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.

PDF.js rocks!<p>Now, stay tunned for ASM.js because that too will rock (once it is ready).<p>link: <a href="http://asmjs.org/" rel="nofollow">http://asmjs.org/</a>

Love it, but unlike Chrome's embedded PDF reader, it can't "stream" PDFs (a dealbreaker for people viewing media-heavy PDFs on slower connections)

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

Dumb question: What's to stop Chrome from eventually adopting PDF.js?<p>Personally, I see that as the future. Its open source, its "good enough", and Google doesn't have to license the pdf viewer anymore.<p>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.

Before this patch, this is usually how I would open PDFs in Firefox:<p>"Okay, so I clicked on the link. Wait - where's the Download box? No, wait -- I told Firefox to download this MIME type automatically, right? Okay, but where is Evince? I thought it would load after I downloaded it. Okay, let me cd to Downloads, it's probably there. Okay, now I have to open Evince -- no, wait, I can just open Thunar to open it because the .pdf MIME is associated with Evince. Okay, so now I have to launch Thunar... Okay, now where is my Downloads folder again?"<p>Granted, it would be easier if I weren't such a blockhead, but it's still a royal pain in the ass.

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

What I don't understand is why Google doesn't have an open source PDF viewer? I mean, Chromium renders OpenGL, decodes movies, contains fastest JavaScript VM and it cannot view PDFs? Given what they did to JavaScript speed, can you imagine what viewer they would be capable of producing of? At least they should join Mozilla on improving pdf.js, IMO...

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

I've been using it for about a month. It's my default PDF viewer, on my desktop - though sometimes it has choked on a file, and search has been an issue on large files.<p>Generally though, it's a good solution that doesn't require dealing with Adobe updates all the time.

Is this based on pdf.js? I couldn't seem to find out quickly. If so, very cool!<p>Edit: I was being lazy, it definitely is. Very nice that it's plugin-free and a pure HTML5 solution.

I've been using it for while (it shipped before but wasn't enabled by default; which I did). It works great most of the time, and is hassle-free. It's also likely safer to use.<p>Now, if only Gmail would let me preview attachments in it. They do it for Chrome's plugin. I tried messing with the URL arguments, but it seems the Gmail server won't even give you the inline (ie not a download) version of the PDF if your browser doesn't pretent to be Chrome.

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.<p>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.<p>EDIT: I have Firefox as my OS X Mountain Lion's PDF viewer app now. Works quite well!

I've been using this for a while in Firefox beta, and it's generally really good.<p>I have two small problems with it, which perhaps won't be too hard to fix:<p>1. PDFs of old academic papers that are just strung-together CCITT (fax) compressed monochrome scans. Preview.app, Adobe Reader and Chrome resample those to give a readable quasi-anti-aliased effect. PDF.js makes the text jaggy and spindly and hard to read.<p>2. No back/forward navigation.

I've been enjoying Pdf.js for months, as I use Aurora as my main browser. Aurora[1] is the the first step before Firefox Beta.<p>If you want to use awesome features like pdf.js earlier... get on Aurora. It has been surprisingly stable channel for pre-beta code.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/aurora/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/aurora/</a>

Impressive piece of Javascript, but it's quite heavy on my CPU. I will continue using Evince for the time being.

We have a major in house application that displays PDF files as a core part of its functionality.<p>The Firefox PDF reader is very slow compared to Chrome's.<p>Also, the second and subsequent PDF files you click on do not commence the display at the top of the page, the appear to commence display somewhere down the page, I'm guessing maybe at the position that the previous PDF scrolled to. So immediately you need to pull the scrollbar back to the top before you can start reading the PDF.<p>So for now, just on speed alone we'll pass on the Firefox PDF reader.

This is really amazing, but I wish these two browsers would be pushing for a FOSS version of PDF instead.<p>I do not think openXPS is entirely FOSS but it is a good place to start looking for an alternative.<p>Here is an xps file on the web to see how your browser handles it: <a href="http://www.rosebudschooldist.com/images/Feb%20Cal%202013.xps" rel="nofollow">http://www.rosebudschooldist.com/images/Feb%20Cal%202013.xps</a>

Thanks for doing this, but it is not working well for me! It takes way longer to load than a normal PDF viewer, is slow, and basically I gave up and closed it when pages were still black, or white, with a rotating loading indicator, minutes after a regular PDF viewer already showed it. This in Linux.<p>Thanks!

just tried it on a large PDF. Chrome takes about 1 second to load while FF takes 10, and the visual result in FF is nearly unreadable (while in Chrome it looks just like it does in Acrobat). i'd love to have nice open-source native PDF support, but this surely doesn't cut it for release.

If this is the future of computing, then I quit. I don't want to play anymore.

Interesting. I was wondering why I had to re-enable FoxIt viewer after the latest Firefox update. Maybe it works well for some PDFs, but the first two I happened to open were formatted pretty badly.

What, this is not what a web browser is supposed to do.

how is pdf.js gonna be updated in firefox... i was using the dev version add-on of pdf.js and seems to work better than the one shipped in FF19

Don't miss the announcement that Firefox for Android now supports ARMv6! Many ~$100 Android phones now have the option of a better browser!

As a pure Javascript solution, it can run on a wide variety of platforms, as far as the browsers are running.

Works well, looks sleek, and only randomly locked up once (To be fair, I had tons of tabs open).<p>Good job!

Is there anyway to change the background/foreground color ?

what happened to doing one thing and doing that well? what is next, office documents?

Serious question: what took so long?!

The experience on Android phones is solid but this core feature is really late to the game.<p>I love firefox but cant keep using a browser thats always playing catch-up

Why is this news except the fact that Chrome has had this for years? Was Adobe paying Mozilla in the same way that Google paid them for the search bar preference?