d1adab8c7b
This patch updates the minimum supported browsers as follows: - Safari 15.4, which was released on 2022-03-15; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_version_history#Safari_15 Nowadays we usually we try, where feasible and possible, to support browsers that are about two years old. The reasons for limiting support to a *somewhat* more recent Safari version include: - Throughout the history of the PDF.js project, Safari has always been the worst browser to attempt to support. Compared to other browsers there's a disproportionate number of bugs affecting Safari, especially on iOS, and in most cases those are browser-specific issues that we simply cannot address.[1] - Safari has often been a lot slower, compared to other browsers, at implementing new web-platform features. Historically this has sometimes blocked usage of new features, for the benefit of the Firefox PDF Viewer, and it's very often meant having to include and maintain polyfills *only* for Safari. - The current (minimum) supported Safari version lack enough functionality that polyfills placed in the `src/shared/compatibility.js` file are unfortunately not sufficient, but it also requires a bunch of special-cases in both the `gulpfile` and in the `web/`-code. - Given that the *built-in* Firefox PDF Viewer is the primary development target for the PDF.js library, and the general development pace these days, we need to limit the maintenance "overhead" caused by other browsers. --- [1] In a few cases a work-around might be possible, however it'd negatively affect e.g. performance, readability, and/or maintainability of the code.
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 the latest JavaScript features; please also see this wiki page.
-
Modern browsers: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html
-
Older browsers: https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/legacy/web/viewer.html
Browser Extensions
Firefox
PDF.js is built into version 19+ of Firefox.
Chrome
- 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 a modern and fully up-to-date browser; refer to Building PDF.js for non-development usage of the PDF.js library.
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
If you need to support older browsers, run:
$ gulp generic-legacy
This will generate pdf.js and pdf.worker.js in the build/generic/build/ directory (respectively build/generic-legacy/build/).
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