html5/css3, Asp.net MVC3 - View pdf in an html page on mobile safari

Question

My upcoming mobile web project requires viewing dynamically chosen pdf files inside the webpage. I am using iFrame to display the pdf file and the file can be scrolled using two-finger scrolling. But the problems I am facing are:

1. The first page of the file is not displayed completely on the iPad and gets cut off along the width unlike when I view it on the desktop browsers where the first page of the pdf is always entirely displayed although zoomed out to fit in the iFrame area.

2. There is no visual indication for the users that the pdf document can be scrolled, i.e., there is no scroll bar on the pdf document.

3. The controls (page navigation, zoom etc.) for the pdf viewer (Adobe reader) don't appear on the document unlike when I see it on the desktop browsers.

What is the best way to achieve what I am trying to do? Do any of you experts know any solutions/workarounds to the problems I am facing? An entirely different approach using anything other than iFrame can also be considered.

The reason why the pdf should be inside the html page is that, the list of pdf files will be on a menu bar on the left side of the page and the user can click on any of them to view on the same page. Ideally, they will have the capability to toggle between full screen view and that view.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

The issue appears to be a bug with Safari on the IPad.

I didn't find a solution for embedding the pdf in html but I did find this:

If you return FileStreamResult from your controller action instead of a view, the pdf will open in a new tab, it's not embedded html but at least your user is not having to download files and open them manually.

Answer 2

I came across this Recommended way to embed PDF in HTML? while researching on the web to find an answer.

The mentioned link discusses about some options that I can use and the google document viewer works for me though don't know if there is anything (like data limit) I need to be aware of before using it on the website. Also I have no idea if it is a good solution (though the full screen mode is not available, but zoom-in/zoom-out and next/prev page buttons are there are show up in the mobile safari on the iPad) to use for an web app that will be run on the iPad.

Anyway, I will keep researching for a better solution and if i don't find any, I'll stick to the google document viewer.

Answer 3

I created a tiny JavaScript module that helps you to show a PDF inline and be able to scroll it. But I also couldn't figure out a way to make it fit the total width of the parent container.

Check it out: https://github.com/williamrjribeiro/ipdf-scroll

Cheers.

Answer 4

I had the same problem of the pdf not being displayed completely. The only thing I found to fix this was the change the size of the div containing the pdf.

For example if the element containing the pdf is a div then I change its width to any value and the rollback to the value it had before. Changing Width or height any one works.

Sometimes I had to wait a little using a setTimeout before calling my resizable method