Category Archives: HTML5 PDF Viewer

Qoppa’s new HTML solution makes it easy to annotate and markup PDF documents in the browser

Qoppa Software has released a new HTML-based solution allowing to annotate and markup PDF documents in any browser and platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android) without any plugin in order to replace their existing applet-based solutions.

If you are an existing Qoppa Software customer running jPDFNotes and jPDFEditor in an applet inside the browser, you may have seen that some browsers are discontinuing support for Java applets. Specifically, some browsers are discontinuing support for the NPAPI plugin interface, which is what the Java applet container uses to run inside the browser. This means that you will not be able to run jPDFNotes or jPDFEditor in this manner on browsers that are making this change.

We have released a new module in our PDF Automation Server product to address this, so that you can continue to display and markup PDFs in a way that is fully integrated in your application, right in the browser, now without a need for any plugin.

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The PDF Automation Server PDF HTML markup module delivers the following features:

Convert PDF to HTML5 and serve the content directly to the browser. Converting to HTML5 means that the browser is displaying the PDF content directly, so there is no need for a plugin and therefore there is no plugins needed at all. The HTML5 content can be displayed inside the browser as part of your web application and is supported by all browsers, including in mobile devices.
Browser side module, developed in HTML and JavaScript that provides viewing, navigation and markup tools. This module interacts with the PDF Automation Server to request PDF content on demand, displays the content to the end user, and provides a set of annotation tools to add and edit annotations on the PDF.
On save, the browser side module will package and send back the annotations edits to the PDF Automation Server to be merged back into the PDF document.
PDF Automation Server delivers this module, and additional functionality, through a REST API, providing many more PDF functions in addition to the markup functions. This gives you flexibility in accessing the server from your web applications as well as the PDF functions that you can offer to your end users. The server is self-contained and requires no additional software, once you install, you can be up and running with very little effort.

Read more about PDF Automation Server Markup module and download an evaluation version on Qoppa’s website.

About Running Qoppa’s PDF Viewing Component jPDFViewer in Applets

If you are running jPDFViewer, Qoppa’s PDF viewing component, in an applet inside the browser, you may have heard that some browsers are discontinuing support for Java applets. Specifically, some browsers are discontinuing support for the NPAPI plugin interface, which is what the Java applet container uses to run inside the browser. This means that you will not be able to run jPDFViewer in this manner on browsers that are making this change.

We have come up with a few alternatives to continue to use our PDF technology within your web application:

Run jPDFViewer inside a Webstart application.
Webstart application are very similar to applets, they can be launched from a browser, and can connect back to your server to retrieve PDF documents. However, they do not run inside the browser, they run in a separate window. We have a sample of jPDFViewer running in this way in our website, from the jPDFViewer home page (Click on the link called “Webstart Demo”).

You may also be interested in our 2 KB entries:
Integrating a Web PDF Viewer: HTML5 or Applet?
Convert your applet from HTML to Webstart jnlp easily (without changing your applet code)

Convert PDF to HTML5 for viewing
We have also developed and released a new product called jPDFWeb, which converts PDF documents to HTML5 and can then serve them to the browser directly. Converting to HTML5 means that the browser is displaying the PDF content directly, so there is no need for a plugin and therefore there is no plugins needed at all. The HTML5 content can be displayed inside the browser as part of your web application and is supported by all browsers, including in mobile devices.

jPDFWeb runs on the server, typically a J2EE server, and can convert and serve single PDF pages or entire PDF documents, so you can choose how to display the PDF documents on the browser. The HTML5 content produced by jPDFWeb uses vector graphics (it is not an image converter), so the quality of your content remains nearly the same as when viewing PDF documents directly and text content remains searchable.

Visit jPDFWeb Home Page to find links to live demos, documentation and to download an evaluation version.

Server-Side Solution
We have released a new version of our server product, PDF Automation Server, that can convert PDF documents to HTML5 and serve them directly to the browser. The advantages of the server product over jPDFWeb is that it does not require a J2EE container and it provides management and logging, for easier deployment.

Visit PDF Automation Server Home Page to find links to documentation and to download an evaluation version.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about jPDFViewer and any of these new products.

New Java Library to Convert PDF to HTML & New HTML5 PDF Viewer !

Qoppa Software is happy to announce the availability of jPDFWeb, a Java class library that can convert PDF documents to SVG & HTML5.

For companies needing to publish PDF documents on the internet, this is good news, as the library can be easily integrated to create a zero footprint HTML5 PDF viewer that works on all browsers and all client platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, IOS or Android.

On the server-side, jPDFWeb is used to convert on-demand and at high speed PDF documents to SVG. SVG format is a vector graphics format, developed by the World Wide Web, which supports most of the sophisticated features of the PDF format and is resolution independent for high quality viewing. Java is the de-facto programming language for web servers, and a pure Java library such as jPDFWeb, guarantees stability and ease of integration with any J2EE server (such as Tomcat, Jetty, JBoss, Weblogic, Websphere, Glassfish) and on any server platform: Windows, Linux or Unix.

On the client-side, SVG / HTML5 is supported by all browsers and platforms so there is no need for platform specific PDF plug-ins or viewers. A zero foot-print HTML5 PDF Viewer, which demonstrates how to communicate with the server to serve – page by page – the converted SVG / HTML5 files is provided by Qoppa Software. The source code is also made available so developers can customize the viewer visually or functionally to the specific needs of their website or application.

jPDFWeb is based on Qoppa Software’s robust Java PDF parsing and rendering technology, which has been developed and refined over the last 12 years.

Try HTML5 PDF Viewer Demo Now!

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More About jPDFWeb to Convert PDF to SVG

More About HTML5 PDF Viewer