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The `getVisibleElements` helper function currently requires the viewerContainer to be absolutely positioned; possibly fixing this is tracked in issue 11626. Without `position: absolute;` set, in the CSS, there's a number of things that won't work correctly such as e.g. - Determining which pages are currently visible, thus forcing all of them to render on load and increasing resource usage significantly; note https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions#allthepages - Scrolling pages into view, by using the `BaseViewer.currentPageNumber` setter or similar. Based on the number of opened issues over the years, the fact that `position: absolute;` is required has shown to be something that users can very easily overlook unless they follow e.g. the `simpleviewer` example to the letter. Hence, to improve things until such a time that issue 11626 is fixed, we'll now refuse to initialize a `BaseViewer` instance unless the `container` has the required CSS set. (Forcibly setting `position: absolute;` on the viewerContainer element is bound to cause significantly more issues/confusion, hence the current approach of throwing an Error.)
PDF.js 
PDF.js is a Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer that is built with HTML5.
PDF.js is community-driven and supported by Mozilla. Our goal is to create a general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering PDFs.
Contributing
PDF.js is an open source project and always looking for more contributors. To get involved, visit:
- Issue Reporting Guide
- Code Contribution Guide
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Good Beginner Bugs
- Projects
Feel free to stop by our Matrix room for questions or guidance.
Getting Started
Online demo
Please note that the "Modern browsers" version assumes native support for
features such as e.g. async/await, and ReadableStream.
-
Modern browsers: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html
-
Older browsers: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/es5/web/viewer.html
Browser Extensions
Firefox
PDF.js is built into version 19+ of Firefox.
Chrome
- The official extension for Chrome can be installed from the Chrome Web Store. This extension is maintained by @Rob--W.
- Build Your Own - Get the code as explained below and issue
gulp chromium. Then open Chrome, go toTools > Extensionand load the (unpackaged) extension from the directorybuild/chromium.
Getting the Code
To get a local copy of the current code, clone it using git:
$ git clone https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js.git
$ cd pdf.js
Next, install Node.js via the official package or via nvm. You need to install the gulp package globally (see also gulp's getting started):
$ npm install -g gulp-cli
If everything worked out, install all dependencies for PDF.js:
$ npm install
Finally, you need to start a local web server as some browsers do not allow opening
PDF files using a file:// URL. Run:
$ gulp server
and then you can open:
Please keep in mind that this requires an ES6 compatible browser; refer to Building PDF.js for usage with older browsers.
It is also possible to view all test PDF files on the right side by opening:
Building PDF.js
In order to bundle all src/ files into two production scripts and build the generic
viewer, run:
$ gulp generic
This will generate pdf.js and pdf.worker.js in the build/generic/build/ directory.
Both scripts are needed but only pdf.js needs to be included since pdf.worker.js will
be loaded by pdf.js. The PDF.js files are large and should be minified for production.
Using PDF.js in a web application
To use PDF.js in a web application you can choose to use a pre-built version of the library
or to build it from source. We supply pre-built versions for usage with NPM and Bower under
the pdfjs-dist name. For more information and examples please refer to the
wiki page on this subject.
Including via a CDN
PDF.js is hosted on several free CDNs:
- https://www.jsdelivr.com/package/npm/pdfjs-dist
- https://cdnjs.com/libraries/pdf.js
- https://unpkg.com/pdfjs-dist/
Learning
You can play with the PDF.js API directly from your browser using the live demos below:
More examples can be found in the examples folder. Some of them are using the pdfjs-dist package, which can be built and installed in this repo directory via gulp dist-install command.
For an introduction to the PDF.js code, check out the presentation by our contributor Julian Viereck:
More learning resources can be found at:
The API documentation can be found at:
Questions
Check out our FAQs and get answers to common questions:
Talk to us on Matrix:
File an issue:
Follow us on twitter: @pdfjs