Viewing Documents Offline

[Matt Parizeau]

Q:

Is it possible to use the WebViewer completely offline (no internet)?


A:

There are a few different ways to view documents offline which can be useful in different cases:

1) HTML5 Offline Mode

The HTML5 WebViewer supports offline mode which uses IndexedDB or Web SQL (depending on the browser) to store file data.  An internet connection is required initially to download the file, however once the file is downloaded the user can switch to offline mode to continue viewing the file without a connection.

You can find an offline mode sample here: http://www.pdftron.com/webviewer/demo/samples.html

Sample code can be found in the WebViewer download package (http://www.pdftron.com/webviewer/download.html).

2) Native App Integration

It is also possible to embed WebViewer in native mobile apps.  Currently there is sample code for how to do this in an Android app and in the next WebViewer release there will be a sample project for embedding in an iOS app.

The sample code can be found in the WebViewer download package (http://www.pdftron.com/webviewer/download.html).

3) Viewing documents from the local filesystem

See this post (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pdfnet-webviewer/CSlqx2miJYI/discussion) for some sample code using the LocalPartRetriever. Note that because of security restrictions this may not work in some browsers "out of the box". At the current time it appears that Firefox is the only browser that works without modifications.