Re:Firefox 80
by t0astbread on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @01:04PM
(#24273470)
I suppose it's easier for a browser vendor to build this into their existing program than to create an entirely new one. Your sentiment is understandable to me, (my) PDF viewing is disconnected enough from web browsing to warrant being split off into a separate program. But PDF is probably an expected feature from a browser for many people.
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PDF as a native browser feature started IIRC with Chrome — until then, everyone had to use a plugin. I’ve always thought the reason Chrome built in a PDF reader was that Adobe Reader was really slow to start and brought the browsing experience to a jarring halt.
People would even put in “warning: pdf” text when linking to PDFs because of how Adobe Reader slowed people down.
I thought PDF.js was the first implementation. Firefox added it in 2012.
Chrome’s PDF viewer launched in Dec 2010[1] with v8.0.552.
The release notes do note that a benefit of the built-in viewer is that it’s sandboxed. That’s fair enough, I guess — the Chrome team had a bee in their bonnet about plugins going all the way back to the Chrome launch comic[2].
Interestingly the Chrome team were using svn back then — that’s how long it’s been :-)
[1] https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2010/12/stable-beta-ch...