Implement pdf.js

Many of the other features of the PDF Viewer in Firefox would be great to have - page numbers (Both actual page numbers as well as pdf page numbers), as well as easy keyboard controls (left/right to go forward/back pages)

In order to do this, either Orion will have to completely make its own PDF viewer, or use firefox's, if it is open source.

eirk It is open source, as well as being available through a chrome extension (one that does not appear to work on Orion from what I could tell).

The Firefox PDF viewer can be found here: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js

saul Thanks, this looks useful.

How does one activate the sidebar in question in their demo?
https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html

saul and you reckon this is much better than WebKit's built in viewer? Any cons to replacing it? Anything even better open source out there?

Vlad Honestly, I haven't looked at much in terms of other open source options. I can definitely take a look and let you know. However, I do greatly prefer Firefox's PDF viewer over both the WebKit built in viewer and the Preview desktop application as well.

Vlad I believe it is better. It comes with more view options, and I wonder about the performance although.

Fortrikka Measure performance on a large PDF before we do this?

Vlad I tried this link and got a firefox-like PDF view but I have tried some other files and get the PDFKit style viewer, and there is no TOC bar. Can check the screenshot below.

The link of the file of the second picture http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/CTAN/macros/latex/contrib/physics/physics.pdf

lytoooo0 its an old thread - what are your findings/ask?

Vlad There are two different PDF readers show up randomly. The first one looks like a chrome/firefox reader and the second one looks like the safari reader.

lytoooo0 Sorry I did not understand that. What is the ask?

Lol. the first one is supposed to look like the firefox one, as it’s a demo. everything else should look like the webkit one

Adding shortcuts to move one page up or down in a pdf file opened in browser with left and right arrow keys would be quite convenient. I am a student that interacts with a lot of pdf files and id rather have them in browser and so a feature like this would be nice.

Sorry if this already exists in some other form, in case it does, is there a possibility of switching the command to the left and right arrow keys? Since that would feel very intuitive.

Thanks!

In my experience PDFJs has excellent performance. I find it consistently less laggy and more responsive than Orion's builtin PDF viewer.

You can investigate performance with the example viewer here.

According to the FAQ, performance is more dependent on file complexity/size than the number of pages. Not exactly sure why this is

Not only is PDFJs more feature rich, I also find it more robust. It avoids some bizarre freezes I've had with Orion's builtin pdf viewer. Not sure if Safari has these issues with its pdf viewer. Its been so long since I used that.

The PDF viewer is one of the reasons I still keep Firefox as a secondary browser. When I'm working with a lot of pdfs, I'll start moving tabs from Orion to Firefox just to take advantage of Firefox's better viewer.

As a bonus, switching to PdfJS would also resolve the find text in PDF feature.

NOTE: I've tried using the PDFJS Chrome Extension for this, but unfortunately Kagi doesn't seem to support it (doesn't process the URL correctly).