Opera wants to integrate Mozilla’s pdf.js into its own browser

Opera wants to integrate pdf.js, a PDF reader in JavaScript developed by Mozilla, into its browsers. Currently, pdf.js is used in Firefox. It is not yet clear when Opera will have the implementation ready.

Opera developer Thorben Bochenek describes in a guest post on Mozilla’s Hack blog that the Norwegian browser builder was looking for a good PDF reader for Opera. They soon arrived at pdf.js, the JavaScript library that makes PDF files readable in Firefox, among others. Upon closer examination of the code, Bochenek said he was impressed, but there was still room for improvement, especially in rendering complex PDF files and processing speed.

Using some old PCs, Bochenek researched the correct rendering of PDFs by pdf.js, also looking at speed. In total, he had pdf.js render seven thousand different PDF documents. According to the developer, pdf.js manages to display 96 percent of the tested files correctly, while 0.8 percent crashes when opened. The speed would also be okay.

The Opera developer says he is now contributing to the code of pdf.js and the developer indicates that he wants to include the PDF reader in Opera. This is remarkable, because Chromium, on which the current Opera browsers are based, already contains its own PDF reader. The pdf.js implementation will be flagged in upcoming test versions of Opera and eventually the PDF reader should be fully integrated in the Norwegian browser.