I am working on a web application and there is a need to preview PDF in Firefox.
Obviously I have embedded the PDF in the HTML code. The problem is that these PDFs contain forms and I know that the built-in Firefox viewer cannot display forms. Except the forms (which contain digital signatures) the rest of the document is displayed properly and in Chrome everything works fine (displaying the signatures too).
I want to ask which is the best approach to support the view of the whole document in Firefox. The current version I am working on is 52.7.3 but I want to do the system scalable for future versions.
I was thinking of transforming the PDF into a Base64 String and embed like that but trying this with some online demos did not work either (maybe the document is quite big?).
The other posibility I was thinking of, is transforming the PDF in JPEG (or similar format) and preview like that. What do you think about that?
Is there any library to handle PDF files from Java/Javascript code that does not use embedded viewers? I tried PDF.js but I realised that it is using the built in viewers. Correct me on this If I am wrong.
You could do something that is called "flattening". This involves taking the form field appearance (graphics) and moving them directly into the page, and then removing the form fields themselves. Is also often done on annotations too.
This ensures that the fields are visible (rendered) by every PDF reader, but also that users cannot possibly edit the fields (since the field is removed).
This would of course invalidate any e-signature, since you are modifying the PDF, but if you kept the original PDF, that should not be an issue.
Once the fields are flattened, then Firefox/Pdf.js will show everything fine.
Is mandatory to open file specifically with Firefox? If not, you can use Desktop.open(File) to open a file with the default application for PDF files. (https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/awt/Desktop.html)
Desktop.open(File)
You can use this to open the PDF file if the file does not have to be opened with Firefox.
Related
I am looking for ways to present a PDF file in the browser but make it not downloadable or printable.
If someone really goes through all the trouble to disable the JavaScript library or anything like that, that is fine. This is more for the reason that the content within the PDF will be updated regularly so if you download it it will be out of date by the next day.
I also cannot rely on marking the pdf as protected or encryption as a reasonable way to accomplish this.
If you have any library recommendations or anything else it would be appreciated. I am currently exploring if it is feasible using PDF.js and ViewerJS
I was able to find a solution using ViewerJS and this CSS. The CSS shows a blank page when you try to print (ViewerJS already distorts it to a non-printable state) and ViewerJS prevents you from downloading as a PDF file and instead tries to save as an HTML file.
This meets the requirements of making it just inconvenient enough to discourage users from trying to download the file since the file is always easily accessible on almost any page of the site.
https://gist.github.com/ActuallyConnor/2a80403c7827dd1f78077fb2b5b7e785
I need to generate a PDF from the current screen in my webapp. Some kind of screenshot, but I'm facing serious difficulties.
The main problem is that the view contains a grid made with jQuery Gridster; and some "widgets" contain complex elements like tables, highcharts, etc.
So plugins like jsPDF or html2canvas can't render my page in a prorper PDF. They always generate it blank.
This is how the page looks like. You can/move resize each element:
(Sorry for the CIA style, but there's business data in there)
Some ideas I came across but don't work are:
Using browser print-to-pdf feature programatically. (can't)
Use phantomjs. (but page state matters, so...)
I believe a solution to this poroblem may be widely adopted by anyone trying to generate a PDF of img from current screen in a web app. Quite an unresolved problem.
It's ok if only works on Google Chrome.
Many thanks.
EDIT:
One posible solution might be to find a way to represent the current layout status with an object and save it with and id.
Then retrieve that object via url param with the id and apply the stored layout to the inital page.
This way I might able to take a screenshot with phatomjs, but it seems quite complex to me. Any alternative?
Based on the fact that you're struggling with capturing dynamic content, I think at this point you need to take a step back and see that you might need to alter your approach. The reason these plugins are failing is because they will only work with the HTML before interactions right?
Why not convert the HTML to .pdf format from the server side? But the key part here is, send the current HTML back. By sending it back, you're sending updated static HTML back to the server to be rendered into a PDF? I've used HTML to PDF from server side before and it works fine, so I can't see why it wouldn't be appropriate here.
See this answer for details about HTML to PDF server side.
I'm building an HTA application in which I need to display a list of file with their associated system icon.
I'm using FileSystemObject to list the file but there seem to have no way to get the icon...
I've found a script in VBS that can save the icon of a file into a .ico .
It read the file (PE resource file, .exe or dll) and parse the icon data.
I modified that script to return the icon's bytes, convert it to base64 and use embed base64 images in HTML.
Here's the original script: http://gilpin.us/IconSiphon/
Issue
) In most case the .ico contains multiple icons (many sizes and color depth) but there's no way I can specify which one to use (as I need 16x16 icons).
) Not all icons are displayed
) Could be slow with many file as it read exe and dll (but I'm ok with that, I can cache already fetched icon)
I've also tried some ActiveX control but none seem to work properly. Even those provided by microsoft (ShellFolderView or ListView) are very buggy.
Requirements
Must display 16x16 icon
Must allow multiple file selection
Everything must be embed in hta (if possible). No external .exe
Does anyone know a way to achieve that?
Thanks!
Use SHGetFileInfo() with the SHGFI_ICON flag.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762179(v=vs.85).aspx
The filesystemobject will provide you the necessary functions for enumerating files on the local filesystem. However to get the icon image you will need to use the win32 api per #seanchase's response or an external exe.
However you can access the win32api via javascript in the hta using the wshApiToolkit activex object - http://www.google.com/search?q=wshAPIToolkit.ucATO%2F&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1
Find a copy of that and you're close to being done. It does require distributing the activex object with your code and shell executing the registration process from within the HTA so that might violate your third constraint. Though I believe you can base64 encode the exe into the hta in a dataurl and write that back out to the file system so it would at least be bundled into a single file. If you support that option then maybe embedding an exe that does the same would meet your requriements.
Definitely some hacky stuff that may be unstable on future OS versions - heck I'm not even sure the wshApiToolkit works on windows 7, and 8 is just around the corner. Good luck!
You indicated you're opened to installing ActiveX components and using them in your HTA.
If I had the time, I would approach this for myself by creating ActiveX components using Visual Studio to call FindResource, LoadResource and LockResource. These will enable access to the Group Icon resource for which I would then provide rich interfaces to iterate through the Icons offering the ability to extract BMPs (or PNGs).
This is "how" I would go about achieving this short of actually going off doing it.
Once I build a similar HTA interface and I faced the same problem. I solved the problem by creating a custom icon gallery and converting the images using base64. You may achieve the same by either converting or using sprite. Many UI does it, even java.swing has its own collection embbebed. As you noticed, reading from *.dll can speed down the application
I was trying to do something like this: http://www.element-it.com/Examples/MultiPowUpload/AdvancedHTMLinterface.html
But in my search for information I found that is not possible to perform multiple file selection with simple HTML and JavaScript (and JSP in the server side). There is a way to do this without using Flash? A third party component you could recommend?
Thanks.
Actually according to the specification, normal HTML file upload fields are supposed to be multiple-file-upload fields. Opera supported it for a bit, allowing you to ctrl-click to select multiple files from a file picker. But it almost always broke the webapp since many web frameworks didn't know about it and would fall over.
In the meantime, it usually suffices to use JavaScript to add an extra file upload field to the form when the previous one has been filled in. This can be made gracefully-degrading for non-JS UAs, whilst sprucing up the management of multiple files with script and pretty icons.
If you go with a Flash uploader, it's a good idea to back it up with a simple HTML file upload field for compatibility there too.
It is still works via flash, but the YUI Uploader component allows you to add multiple file selection with minimal knowledge of flash - the API to interact with it is purely javascript.
HTML 5 will support multiple file upload, but that is not currently well supported in a large number of browsers
I need to make new own file upload field using HTML and Javascript since Built-In file upload not showing full path of the file
I need to make it similar to file upload by using button and textbox
please help to solve this problem
You can't.
There are security considerations browsers must adhere to and there is now way around that.
FYI this is also why Firefox doesn't allow drag and drop into a file field.
Just fyi, I think the path display depends on your browser.
If you're willing to/can do so, java (not javascript) might be able to help you with your original problem. Java brings it's own problems, though.
The file upload is a specific input type, which you can't easily replace, but in some browsers you may be able to style it.
You should be able to access the filename from javascript, and display this in a different part of the page (possibly hiding the file input at the same time) so the user can see what will be selected.
Another option is to use Flash for a fancier front-end (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/upload/ (assuming you have a flickr account) as an example), but I've never used one of these as a developer