PDF.js is a Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer that is built with HTML5.
PDF.js is community-driven and supported by Mozilla Labs. Our goal is to create a general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering PDFs.
PDF.js is an open source project and always looking for more contributors. To get involved checkout:
For further questions or guidance feel free to stop by #pdfjs on irc.mozilla.org.
PDF.js is built into version 19+ of Firefox, however two extensions are still available that are updated at a different rate:
- Development Version - This version is updated every time new code is merged into the PDF.js codebase. This should be quite stable but still might break from time to time.
- Stable Version - After version 24 of Firefox is released we no longer plan to support the stable extension. The stable version will then be considered whatever is built into Firefox.
The Chromium extension is still somewhat experimental but it can be installed two ways:
- Unofficial Version - This extension is maintained by a PDF.js contributor.
- Build Your Own - Get the code as explained below and issue
node make chromium. Then open Chrome, go toTools > Extensionand load the (unpackaged) extension from the directorybuild/chromium.
The version of the extension for the Opera browser can be found at the Opera add-ons catalog.
To get a local copy of the current code, clone it using git:
$ git clone git://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js.git pdfjs
$ cd pdfjs
Next, you need to start a local web server as some browsers don't allow opening PDF files for a file:// url:
$ node make server
You can install Node via nvm or the official package. If everything worked out, you can now serve
You can also view all the test pdf files on the right side serving
In order to bundle all src/ files into two productions scripts and build the generic
viewer, issue:
$ node make 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. If you want to support more browsers than Firefox you'll also need
to include compatibility.js from build/generic/web/. The PDF.js files are large and
should be minified for production.
You can play with the PDF.js API directly from your browser through the live demos below:
- Hello world: http://jsbin.com/pdfjs-helloworld-v2/9612/edit#html,live
- Simple reader with prev/next page controls: http://jsbin.com/pdfjs-prevnext-v2/6865/edit#html,live
The repo contains a hello world example that you can run locally:
For an introduction to the PDF.js code, check out the presentation by our contributor Julian Viereck:
You can read more about PDF.js here:
- http://andreasgal.com/2011/06/15/pdf-js/
- http://blog.mozilla.com/cjones/2011/06/15/overview-of-pdf-js-guts/
Even more learning resources can be found at:
Check out our FAQs and get answers to common questions:
Talk to us on IRC:
- #pdfjs on irc.mozilla.org
Join our mailing list:
Subscribe either using lists.mozilla.org or Google Groups:
- https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-pdf-js
- https://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.pdf-js/topics
Follow us on twitter: @pdfjs
Weekly Public Meetings