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Comment by cptskippy | Hacker News Reader

I got tired of constantly updating due to vulnerabilities. I haven't had a PDF viewer installed for years, I have PDFs open in Firefox.

I got tired of having Adobe Updater constantly running in the background (why not a scheduled task run periodically like Google Updater?!) and the need to update/reboot my PC regularly when a new version of Acrobat came out.

I switched PDF viewers briefly but ended in the same update cycles I was in with Adobe.

PDF.js isn't perfect but I've yet to come across a PDF that it couldn't open for me. I use it mainly to view things like insurance bills or other random documents where pixel perfect rendering is irrelevant.

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Agreed. I use Firefox on OS X and I love pdf.js. I found it a huge hassle to get native PDF working on Firefox in the past, and with pdf.js I just don't have to worry about security. I've also not had much/any compatibility issues with pdfs. Bills, concert tickets, and specs all render acceptably. I will be very sad to see it go.

This is why package managers are so important for any OS. They shouldn't be updating independently.

As a scientist, pdf.js is simply not capable enough for any serious work with pdf.

I would love to do as you say, and read pdfs in the browser only. From what I have learned in the context of this discussion, switching away from pdf.js will contribute to enabling that.

> As a scientist, pdf.js is simply not capable enough for any serious work with pdf.

As a counterpoint, I regularly read (CS) research papers in pdf.js and have never had any trouble. One of the reasons I stuck with Firefox is the superior Zotero integration.

Hmmm... pure math papers are often fine but I used to still see misformatted math relatively frequently, maybe I should give it another try.

Nonsense. On windows I have used foxit for a long time and I never had all that shit that you are talking about. On Mac if anyone told me that they used happily a JavaScript PDF viewer instead of the built in viewer I would seriously worry for their mental health.

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