How browsers support PDF viewing and which ones
I am using chrome and I can view PDFs in my browsers as a PDF file. I would like to know if this is what chrome supports or is it because of the adobe plugin?
I basically need to understand how browsers support PDF viewing and which ones do.
The reason I am asking this is to create a PDF gallery viewer. I have looked at PDF.js and it seems to be awesome because it converts PDF to a native network format for all browser to support. But from what I can see, all browsers already support viewing PDFs (at least the ones I could handle), so why exactly is PDF.js awesome?
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Chrome has its own PDF support (it doesn't require a separate plugin or Adobe Reader).
How Chrome supports PDF
Wikipedia notes that as of June 2010, Chrome's built-in PDF viewer is itself a plugin, running as native code through the Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client#Pepper
You can confirm this by setting the Click To Play option for all plugins and then visiting the PDF document online. Please note that the PDF is now only displayed after clicking on the puzzle piece to allow the plugin to work. The Click To Play option can be found in Chrome Settings> Show Advanced Settings> Privacy> Content Settings> Plugins.
Other browsers with built-in PDF support
Firefox and the Mac version of Safari include built-in PDF support. However, Internet Explorer does not do this, so Adobe Reader must be installed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers#Image_format_support
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