Make PDF previews actually readable

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

Hi!

I use this neat component quite often, at least once a week.

The main issue is that the embedded PDFs are most of the time unreadable by defaut because the preview size is so small.

Default:

After toggling off the page previews and clicking twice the “fit” button (that’s a lot of clicks):

Sure, it’s better, but still hardly readable. The height is so small (hardcoded at 500px but overridable), and the width isn’t the best too.

I get the component is called “PDF Previews” yet, I’d like to be quickly able to actually read the PDF in good conditions.

I can click the link, but it will download the PDF, so it’s not what I’m looking for.

Currently the only way to quickly display the PDF in a readable state is clicking the print icon, which is not really intuitive:

Is it possible to simply have a “fullscreen” toggle to display the PDF preview in a larger popup, the same way it exists for tables and codeblocks?

I’d be so happy to see such a QoL change in this component.

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

@Canapin

I can click the link, but it will download the PDF, so it’s not what I’m looking for.

Uh. After searching for a bit on meta, I notice it shouldn’t:

@nathank

allaboutcats.pdf (42.2 KB)

Clicking the link opens the PDF but on my instance, it downloads them. I don’t know why.

[Moin]

I think there was a fix recently

Regression - PDFs download initiated on click (should be open in new tab)

Currently, I’m finding that clicking on the PDF link when a PDF preview is active currently attempts to download the PDF (undesired) instead of opening it in a new tab. This is with simple self-hosting (single container, no CDN, no S3, horizon theme). This whole thing was addressed back here: The reason why this is a problem is that a common user desire is to read an inline PDF in the entire window, as the iframe is quite restrictive. Download adds an unecessarily annoying step. And there is…

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

Thank you for this information, I wasn’t aware of it. I updated, but my PDFs are still forcibly downloaded on click.

Whether they are opened or downloaded on click, the requested feature stays anyway: I’d like to be able to properly preview my PDFs in the context of a Discourse post.

[david (David Taylor)]

@Canapin

I updated, but my PDFs are still forcibly downloaded on click.

The fix in that other topic isn’t merged yet, so that’ll be why

I reopened it for clarity

[Moin]

My expectation that the PR had been merged and this was fixed was based on the fixed tag, not the fact that the topic was closed. I think the topic was also closed again before the fix was merged

@Canapin it’s merged, so you might want to try.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

@Canapin

Thank you for this information, I wasn’t aware of it. I updated, but my PDFs are still forcibly downloaded on click

I switched to the plugin version

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

@Moin

My expectation that the PR had been merged and this was fixed was based on the fixed tag, not the fact that the topic was closed.

Yeah, I think that was my bad - I tagged it fixed before it was merged (assuming it would be shortly). Sorry!

Delighted that it is sorted now.