Why You Should Embed a Web-based HTML5 Document Viewer in Your Application

Developers have plenty of options for viewing PDFs, TIFFs, MS Office, and other document types in their applications. With so many solutions to choose from, it’s easy to put off thinking about document viewing support until much later in the development process. But doing so is often a recipe for trouble, resulting in ad hoc workarounds and settling for third-party plug-ins or native browser support that could impact application performance and security.

Directly embedding a web-based HTML5 viewer provides developers with much more flexibility and control over how their application manages and presents documents, building a better user experience for their users.

5 Benefits of an Embedded Web-based HTML5 Viewer

1. Customizable Viewing Experience

One of the main benefits of a web-based HTML5 viewer is the ability to customize the GUI of the viewer. Developers are able to easily able to show/hide function buttons, move toolbars, change colors, adjust the viewer window size, and more. This range of flexibility makes HTML5 viewers very versatile and flexible to meet the various requirements of your users.

2. Control Over Files

Organizations put a lot of time and resources into safeguarding confidential assets, but they can quickly undermine those efforts by failing to maintain control over their documents when sharing them. Some viewing solutions require users to download the document without having to obtain any special permissions. While this typically isn’t a major concern for public-facing documents, it could be disastrous for any shared documents that contain sensitive data or private information.

When developers use an embedded web-based viewer, they allow document owners to maintain control over what people can and cannot do with shared documents. If they simply want someone to be able to view a document, but not edit it or download it, they can set the right permissions and restrictions to maintain control over the file.

3. Responsive Viewing

Today’s document viewing solutions need to account for what the viewing experience looks like on multiple screen sizes, devices, and network bandwidth. Not everyone will be reading a document on a conventional computer screen. They may want to view documents on a tablet, smartphone, or other mobile device, all of which call for different viewing controls due to the nature of the device interface.

Additionally, depending on the location of the user, network bandwidth might be limited, this can seriously compromise the user experience. Some web-based viewers require every document modification to be handled by the server, which can greatly reduce productivity because of the constant requirement for documents to be resent to the user for each modification. By integrating the right viewing solution, developers can ensure that users will be able to view documents easily no matter what device they’re using or their network bandwidth speed.

4. Little to No Dependencies

Most legacy web viewing solutions use either Oracle Java Applet, Adobe Flash, or Microsoft Silverlight technologies as their framework, which all have been depreciated. This has left many organizations venerable to security issues since they are no longer supported. This has looking for alternative options to replace these viewers but it isn’t always straight forward.

Many HTML5 viewing solutions offer extensive features, but at the cost of impacting application performance and security. That’s because they require cumbersome, memory-intensive plug-ins or complex server configurations. Even though, they still have less dependencies than legacy viewers.

Finding the right HTML5 web-based viewing solution for your systems presents a balance between performance, infrastructure dependences, and compatibility with the current applications. This can be a major obstacle for organizations seeking to leverage an application to support a collaborative workplace.

5. Easy Annotation and Redactions

Many organizations have understandably come to expect viewers to come fully equipped with annotation and redaction tools that allow them to markup files without having to transfer them to another program. For many workflow users, these features are incredibly valuable because they streamline many processes for them.

Embed an Advanced Web-based HTML5 Viewer with MS Technology’s eViewer v7

MS Technology’s eViewer builds upon the versatility and reliability of the popular PDF.js open-source library, which serves as the foundation of many commercial PDF viewing solutions. From there, we used our extensive imaging technology expertise to push the boundaries in terms of rendering performance, usability, and expanded document file types supported. Optimized for speed and ease of use, the viewer uses an Angular frontend which provides multiple benefits to developers looking to add robust viewing support without bogging down their development cycle:

• Responsive Customizable UI: Easily view and interact with documents on any screen size thanks to optimized controls, and by adding or removing toolbar elements to create a better viewing experience for all of your users.
• Powerful Client-Side Rendering: Most viewer rendering and processes remain entirely within a secure client-side application environment and ensures that images remain crisp at all zoom levels. eViewer supports over 50+ document file types to enable your users to universally view almost any document.
• Annotation: Markup documents files with multiple annotation tools, then store or retrieve markups with an API.
• Lightning-Fast Search: Get near-instant search results when trying to locate specific text, even when viewing large documents.
• White Labeling: Add customized branding to the viewer for a more consistent experience.
• Document Compare: Compare two versions of the same document and highlight their differences so no changes are missed.
• Redaction: Secure sensitive data on documents from unauthorized users reviewing this content, both internal and external users. Redactions can be applied manually or automatically based on data type.

Check out the eViewer website for a more in-depth review of the latest HTML5 viewer as well as a live demo to try it for yourself. If you’re ready to get started with an evaluation, you can contact us now to discuss testing the eViewer in your environment.