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Blog

Notes on PDF rendering, web embeds, and the boring infrastructure that makes the internet work.

Engineering · · 8 min read

Why the same PDF looks different in every browser

Chrome, Safari and Firefox each ship a different native PDF viewer. We mapped the inconsistencies and explain why a JavaScript-rendered viewer is the only way to guarantee identical output everywhere.

Coming soon
Product · · 6 min read

Embeds aren't downloads: how inline PDFs change lead-gen funnels

We pulled anonymized analytics from 40 customers who replaced 'download our PDF' CTAs with inline embeds. Average time-on-page went up 2.8×; bounce dropped 41%.

Coming soon
Tutorial · · 4 min read

Embedding a PDF in WordPress without a plugin

Most WordPress PDF plugins are bloated. Here's the one-line iframe approach we use ourselves, including how to make it responsive and SEO-friendly.

Coming soon
Engineering · · 9 min read

Lazy-loading PDFs: a 38 KB diet for the viewer

How we cut viewer bundle size by deferring the text-selection layer until the first scroll. With benchmarks on real-world reports.

Coming soon
Design · · 5 min read

Designing a viewer that disappears

Good document viewers fade into the background. We share our design constraints, the toolbar decisions we reversed, and what we learned from Kindle.

Coming soon
Launch · · 3 min read

PDFembed 1.0: the simplest way to put a PDF on a webpage

Today we're launching PDFembed publicly. Here's what it does, what's intentionally missing, and where we're headed.

Coming soon