Q: We are currently looking into various solution for a image/
document viewer for our current ASP.NET web application. Currently we
are using our own custom built solution which does not support zoom
and print functionality. Our customers also has the option to use an
Active X plug-in, but since our customers do not want to install a
plug-in we need to provide a solution for them that gives them all the
functionality they could expect from a plug-in without actually
installing one on the client.
The main features that the image viewer must support are the
following:
1. Be able to view multiple page TIFF, PDF. (It would be great
if it would also support XML and HTML rendering)
2. Must run on all modern browsers (that includes IE9 that will
be released soon)
3. Print support on the clients native installed printers
4. No installation needed on the client (preferably no extra
installation on the server either)
5. Zoom and pan support
It seems by looking at your feature list that your PDFNet SDK supports
all of the above, is this something you can confirm? And finally, are
there any requirements for running on the client, such as having
Silverlight or flash enabled?
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A: Based on your requirements it seems that SilverDox SDK (http://
www.pdftron.com/silverdox) would be the best match for your
requirements. SilverDox can run on most browsers with Silverlight on
Windows and Mac. Unlike Java or ActiveX controls, SilverDox does not
require high security permissions so your application will work
without any installation or security warnings etc. You can access some
online samples based on SilverDox on the sample-code page:
http://www.pdftron.com/silverdox/samplecode.html. If all of your files
are pre-converted to Silverlight XOD format (e.g. as part of a batch
process), then you would not need to use any servers side components.
If you need to support dynamic document conversion of streaming you
would most likely need to run SilverDox Document Publisher (i.e.
PDFNet SDK or DocPub) on the server side.
PDFNet SDK can also be used on the client side (as a .NET/Java/C++
component) to implement ActiveX component or an applet; however in
this context it is a bit less browser and platform friendly solution
than when used as part of SilverDox.
Please note that PDFNet (and SilverDox) support PDF, multi-page TIFF
(http://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/samplecode.html#Convert), HTML (http://
www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/samplecode.html#HTML2PDF), MS Office and many
other formats.
PDFNet can also be used in the context of a pure AJAX application
however this type of solution is less flexible/powerful than SilverDox
or ActiveX/Applet. In case you are interested please contuch us and we
will provide you with the server extensions for PDFNet.