

Ask HN: Why is there no standard way to display PDF documents in all browsers? - andrewstuart

You'd think that it would be possible to display PDF documents in web browsers by now.<p>But there is not yet any way to build a web application that integrates PDF documents, because it is not safe to assume that any browser can display PDF.<p>Why is this?  Surely it's in the interests of Adobe to ensure PDF documents can be seamlessly integrated into websites?
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Zev
PDF _is_ a standard, see ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008.

And Adobe has done some work to make it work everywhere. There is a PDF plugin
for the big three OS's (and Solaris). However, no one ships an OS with this
plugin installed by default.

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itsnotvalid
There is no assurance that any plugins would be available on all browsers on
all major platforms. Sometimes it is political not technological (like Flash
on iOS)

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minalecs
scribd does do HTML5 and flash. They do provide an api, but I'm not sure how
useful, then get embed code.

