Mozilla's pdf.js project reaches its first milestone

(PhysOrg.com) -- You may recall our earlier reporting on the Mozilla's pdf.js project, in which the folks over at Mozilla are trying to get their browser to display PDF files in your Firefox web browser with the help of HTML5.

Well, this project has met its first big goal: the "pixel-perfect rendering" of the sample PDF that the company has designated as its first test sample. Currently, it only works in the current version of Firefox and on systems that are running Windows 7. Currently, other operating system and browser version combos are having mixed results at best.

While this is far from a complete project it is a solid first marker when you consider that the document in question has not only text, but graphics, diagrams and tables, all of which makes the project milestone much more complicated. After meeting this milestone the project has been moved up to its

Nevertheless, some serious progress has been made, considering that the sample file contains formatted text, graphics, tables, and graphical diagrams. As a result, the project has been bumped to the .2 version designation. Future steps will include making the Firefox extension available to users and finally shipping the code with a finished version of the Firefox browser. The development team hopes that this update will be a serious upgrade to web security since the pdf.js standard uses only native code pieces that are web safe, leaving fewer opportunities for exploitation.

The pdf.js project is being licensed under a 3-clause BSD license, which is so liberal as to be considered almost open source, an indicator of the developers hope that this will become a community-based project. The developers are welcoming external contributors to help.

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