> PDFs are generally an actual document, separate from the site they're on. If images and videos weren't a part of the web pages being viewed, I would be quite skeptical of including them in the browser.
See, I don't really agree with that because to me, PDFs are a pretty core part of content on the internet that users browse to via their browser. Pretty much every restaurant makes their menu available on their website as a PDF document. Almost all users will interact with PDF documents while browsing the web at some point or the other. Otoh, a tiny fraction will even know what an STL file is, let alone care about opening/viewing one. So that comparison really isn't a fair one.
> That many PDF viewers are awful is an argument for making a better PDF viewer, but not for baking it into a browser.
That's a bit of an odd statement. If anything, it proves exactly why this is a good move from Mozilla. The PDF standard has been around forever, and yet there is a dearth of free, high-quality PDF viewers that aren't bloated or filled with ads or spyware or trying to get you to upgrade to a paid version of their software. So Mozilla has finally taken matters into their own hands and provided a pretty good, light-weight and integrated solution that will do the job for most users. Power users who care can still enable other software via the plugin system as their default PDF viewer. I'm not sure how you can blame Mozilla for addressing a very real deficiency in the state of available software for PDF viewing.
See, I don't really agree with that because to me, PDFs are a pretty core part of content on the internet that users browse to via their browser. Pretty much every restaurant makes their menu available on their website as a PDF document. Almost all users will interact with PDF documents while browsing the web at some point or the other. Otoh, a tiny fraction will even know what an STL file is, let alone care about opening/viewing one. So that comparison really isn't a fair one.
> That many PDF viewers are awful is an argument for making a better PDF viewer, but not for baking it into a browser.
That's a bit of an odd statement. If anything, it proves exactly why this is a good move from Mozilla. The PDF standard has been around forever, and yet there is a dearth of free, high-quality PDF viewers that aren't bloated or filled with ads or spyware or trying to get you to upgrade to a paid version of their software. So Mozilla has finally taken matters into their own hands and provided a pretty good, light-weight and integrated solution that will do the job for most users. Power users who care can still enable other software via the plugin system as their default PDF viewer. I'm not sure how you can blame Mozilla for addressing a very real deficiency in the state of available software for PDF viewing.