Google's Javascript PDF Viewer is Embeddable

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/09/embeddable-google-document-viewer.html

by blasdel • 17 years ago

115 54 17 years ago

googlesystem.blogspot.com

blasdel8• 17 years ago

It also works as its own page: http://docs.google.com/gview?url=

Does anyone know if firefox extensions can register as handlers for MIME types, or if they're restricted to diddling with chrome / pre-existing pages? It'd be really easy to write a WebKit plugin to do it, but not very useful since Safari ships with a flawless PDFKit-based viewer.

I want to get this working in Firefox, but NPAPI plugins are really gross. It looks doable that way, as it appears that a naked nsplugin still gets a DOM and everything, so I could just immediately set window.location.href and be done with it.

thristian• 17 years ago

It sounds like you're looking for window.navigator.registerContentHandler:

    https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.navigator.registerContentHandler

...except a website can only register themselves as a content-handler. You could probably hack up a bookmarklet to do it, if you can't find an XSS vector, but I can't seem to make it work myself.

blasdel8• 17 years ago

So... close...

It'd be easy to make a greasemonkey-style extension that calls this on *, but it wouldn't work for links to other domains (which I'd bet are the majority of PDF links)

joubert2• 17 years ago

I presume one can't use this viewer in your own project (e.g. as a file viewer in a web app).

Does anybody know of similar project but that can be used in your own web app?

blasdel8• 17 years ago

If you serve PDFs with public URLs that Google can GET, you can use this in your web app.

patio112• 17 years ago

I think he is talking about it being risky to assume that the undocumented cross-site embedding is a feature Google is committed to supporting in the coming years and not, say, a wee unintended data leak that any engineer in their megacorp could plug at any time, including smack-dab in the middle of your public launch.

patio112• 17 years ago

Quick Googling suggests that http://vuzit.com/ would work.

You might also be able to hack Thindoc in such a way that it worked for your purpose.

furyg3• 17 years ago

Don't know why you're downmodded.

I use http://www.ajaxdocumentviewer.com/ on my own personal site. It works the same way as Google (but has ads), and handles .doc files.

I'd much rather use the Google app if it could handle .docs :(

makmanalp• 17 years ago

For HN as an alternative to scribd's vaccuum maybe?

axod• 17 years ago

scrolling/zooming even works! die flash, just die.

apgwoz• 17 years ago

Until you said that, I didn't even realize it wasn't flash. This rocks!

mooted2• 17 years ago

Text copy wont work.

I really dont see anything new here. This is exactly the same stuff they have at Google books. Except now its in an iframe .

Flash implementations are obviously superior as of now.Also, try building a decent browser game in javascript and html5.

joubert2• 17 years ago

But it isn't text....

tolmasky• 17 years ago

This is very cool. My only gripe is that if they are going to fake their own selection, then they should override command-a (select all). I tried this, and now I have google's selection AND the entire page selection, which I can't get rid of.

Maro3• 17 years ago

I hope somebody makes a Firefox addon which lets me right-click on a PDF link and select "Preview" using the Google previewer.

blasdel8• 17 years ago

But I don't want to right-click -- adding bloat to the chrome is entirely the wrong way to go about doing this, but unfortunately Mozilla has a bug up their ass and won't let you do it right as an extension.

The right way is to register application/pdf in the browser -- which you can only really do with a native-compiled NPAPI plugin. It looks like it is possible to package them inside a extension xpi, but I'm not sure if addons.mozilla.org will distribute such things.

Maro3• 17 years ago

There's this, but it sucks:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10737

You click a link and it first does some communicatin with Google Docs to get some kind of security token, so it takes 2-3 seconds for the new tab to come up.

EDIT:

A kickass version, just uploaded it to the Firefox Addons site:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/14226/

blasdel8• 17 years ago

I think that addon is worse than you describe: doesn't it add the files to your logged-in Google Docs account, and do so by uploading said files from localhost?

stjarnljuset• 17 years ago

It's good to know that there are alternative ways to embed PDFs, but I'm a little confused by the reaction in the comments. Is this a big improvement over simply using the object tag?

http://blog.flashcolony.com/?p=244

blasdel8• 17 years ago

Yes, for a wide variety of reasons:

  * Before version 8, Adobe's plugin was an epic piece of shit on all platforms
     - old versions are on hundreds of millions of computers!
     - it's still really crashy on Linux (especially in nspluginwrapper)
     - The only OS X browser they support is Safari, in which it is unnecessary
  * Google re-hosts the file for you
  * It is ridiculously snappy with no main-thread-blocking initialization
  * It will never crash your browser
  * Your users don't have an ingrained hatred towards it
      - Rebranding the free Acrobat as "Adobe Reader" was the stupidest thing
        they've ever done (ever hear a user say 'my Adobe is broken'?)

seiji• 17 years ago

I can't tell if you're being facetious in your last line, but I used to work at a place requiring, in their own words, "Adobe must be installed on every computer" long before they changed the Acrobat name.

est• 17 years ago

I wish their Chat Window on Google Spreadsheet were embeddable , too.

ars2• 17 years ago

It's images! Is that really better?

It's not text layed (laid?) out in a cool way with HTML.

It's a png image of each page of the pdf. It's quick sure, but images? Not text? It just seems wrong - why even make pdf's, if all you want is an image of the text?

btn• 17 years ago

Generating an image from the PDF server-side is the only way to faithfully perserve the layout of the PDF.

For some PDFs, Google will give you the option to view it as HTML (it seems to just be the PDFs returned in search results?). It's usable for mostly-text documents, but that's about it.

jbrun• 17 years ago

Can anyone confirm if this works in Internet Explorer?

fauigerzigerk• 17 years ago

It does. Even current versions of IE can show PNGs in iframes, believe it or not ;-)

_ck_• 17 years ago

Here is a bookmarklet I just wrote to look at all the links on a page and open any ending in ".pdf" in google's viewer. (if you have firefox set to open tabs for windows, it will open them in new tabs) Feel free to share and improve.

- - - (select entire text and make into a link) - - -

  javascript:(function(){dl=document.links;for(i=0;i<dl.length;++i){if(dl[i].href.substr(-4)==".pdf"){window.open("http://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url="+dl[i].href);}}})()

- - -

chaosprophet4• 17 years ago

I made this into a greasemonkey userscript. It searches for PDF links on a page and sets them to open in Google's pdf viewer.

Userscript at: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/57453

Tested on Minefield latest nightly, winxp, greasemonkey.

parterburn• 17 years ago

Thanks! It needs to not work on http://docs.google.com so that you can click the "Download" link if you need to...otherwise you are stuck in a loop. Also, I noticed that the search on the full-screen page isn't always available (ie http://bit.ly/4tf1xt)

Chramard• 17 years ago

This one transforms the links rather than opening them automatically. For pages with a lot of pdf links.

    javascript:(function(){dl=document.links;for(i=0;i<dl.length;++i){if(dl[i].href.substr(-4)==".pdf"){dl[i].href="http://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url=+dl[i].href;}}})()

roshanr• 17 years ago

Fixed a missing quote and added void(0) at the end:

  javascript:dl=document.links;for(i=0;i<dl.length;++i){if(dl[i].href.substr(-4)==".pdf"){dl[i].href="http://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url="+dl[i].href;}}void(0);

ntoshev2• 17 years ago

Very smooth, but why does it lack a search box?

ZeroGravitas3• 17 years ago

The full page version has a (pretty good) search function. I'm not sure why they don't have it the embedded one. Even if you just got taken to the results in the full version.

ntoshev2• 17 years ago

ACtually the full page version highlights the results but doesn't navigate to them. Also it seems to be substring search, not an indexed one.

fara• 17 years ago

no search, no print, no save in the viewer. you must always open the new window...

ComputerGuru• 17 years ago

Do you think the same thing exists for Word documents?

Chmiff• 17 years ago

I hope that it will be extended to TeX, PostScript and ODF as well.

The viewers for the first two formats are lagging in the UI department, it would be really nice to be able to access them online.

stef25• 17 years ago

Scribd must love this

Google's Javascript PDF Viewer is Embeddable

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