Technical FAQs

Question

When I click on the download button a ‘download options’ pane appears to the left of the Viewer.

Is there a way I can modify the client code such that clicking the download button skips this step and just downloads the document as a PDF, burning in all the marks/redactions/e-signatures?

Answer

To clear the event listener for the download button and attach your own, you can add this in your client-side JavaScript after the Viewer has been initialized:

$("button.pcc-icon.pcc-icon-download").off("click");

$("button.pcc-icon.pcc-icon-download").on("click", function (event) {
    $("div.pcc-select-download div.pcc-label").html("PDF");
    $("div[data-pcc-checkbox=\"burnMarks\"]").addClass("pcc-checked");
    $("button[data-pcc-download=\"download\"]").click();
});

This will add a new click listener to the download button. In the example above, the click listener sets download parameters (type is set to “PDF”, and marks/redactions/esignatures are included), and then immediately calls the click event on the “download” button that would normally be in the download pane. This should make it so that when the user clicks the download button, the notification dialog immediately appears instead of the download pane, as shown below:

From here the user can click the “save” button to download the resultant document.

Question

When selecting download and including annotations, the resulting PDF does not include the comments. How can we obtain the file as a PDF with the annotation comments included?

Answer

By design, when using the download button, the comments to the annotations are not included in the download.

Workaround

  1. Under the View tab, select Print.
  2. From the Print dialog, select the More options drop-down.
  3. Under the Comments section, select either After Each Page or At End of Document.
  4. When selecting a printer, use the Print to PDF option and it will create a PDF with the comments included.
Question

During the installation of ImageGear for .NET (v23.4 and above), the installer reaches out to Microsoft’s site to download the VC++ redistributable and .NET packages. Which one(s) does it download?

Answer

The ImageGear for .NET installer places the following redistributables onto a system:

In addition to this, the following .NET framework versions are installed:

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 2.x
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0

So, if a system already has all of these installed on it, this should prevent the installer from trying to reach out to download them.

Many organizations utilize spreadsheets to track data and perform complex calculations. Since spreadsheets offer substantial flexibility, it’s not uncommon for a single organization to use them in a variety of ways. For instance, one department might use them for budgeting while another deploys them for risk assessment. Although they can handle complex calculations, spreadsheets are relatively easy to set up and don’t require the same programming knowledge as more specialized solutions. That accessibility has led many organizations to simply convert Excel to web applications using API integrations rather than building new functionality from scratch.

Why You Should Convert Excel Files to Web Applications

Consumers often turn to financial and insurance companies looking for simple answers to simple questions: 

  • How many payments will it take to eliminate my debt?
  • Will adding another person to my insurance policy change my rate?
  • What will the monthly payments on my loan cost based on different interest rates?

To answer questions like these, someone in the organization typically enters the customer’s data into a premade spreadsheet, applies a few conditions using preset formulas, and shares the result. This process could be significantly streamlined by making these calculations readily available as a web application to anyone who visits the firm’s website, allowing both prospective and current customers to get answers quickly while also freeing up time for employees to work on more high-value tasks.

Unfortunately, building a secure, functional web application takes up valuable development resources. A developer could easily spend weeks converting complex spreadsheet formulas into a fully-functional application that integrates into the website or larger platform seamlessly. Even worse, if anything about those formulas were to change (as is often the case with financial and insurance formulas), more development resources will need to be pulled away from existing projects to make the updates.

By converting Excel files to web applications, firms can avoid these problems and provide clients with ready access to the calculations they need. FinTech and InsurTech developers can accommodate this need by building integrations into their solutions that allow users to easily upload and share spreadsheets entirely within an application and without any Microsoft Word dependencies. This bypasses the time-consuming build process and makes it much easier to update the formulas as needed.

Keeping Your Spreadsheets Secure

Of course, making spreadsheets readily available as web applications presents a few important security challenges. Many of the calculations running inside an organization’s spreadsheets are proprietary or contain hidden data that needs to remain private for various confidentiality reasons. That’s why companies are hesitant to simply send copies of their internal spreadsheets to customers or vendors. If those Excel files are made accessible online, there’s an obvious risk that someone could download a copy for themselves or access valuable private intellectual property.

Incidentally, this is also the reason why many firms struggle with sharing spreadsheets even in a collaborative environment. Not only are .XLSX files among the most commonly used file extensions by malware, but granting cloud providers or email servers access to spreadsheets represents too great a security risk for companies in heavily regulated industries.

By converting Excel to web applications, however, organizations can maintain strict access and visibility controls over their spreadsheet files. A good spreadsheet viewer integration will allow users to determine what people see when they use the application and also what information they can access. Formulas and calculations that contain vital intellectual property can be hidden completely. Visitors can be restricted to only editing cells that apply to their information, allowing them to use the spreadsheet without breaking or altering its functionality.

Sharing controls can also restrict what can be downloaded locally. A visitor may need to download or print a copy of their calculations, but they don’t need to download a fully functional copy of the spreadsheet file. Even in a collaborative environment, allowing people to download and edit copies of a spreadsheet can introduce significant version confusion. By keeping everything safely within the confines of the organization’s larger web application, essential data remains as secure and up-to-date as possible.

Other Reasons to Convert Excel to Web Applications

The versatility of spreadsheets allows people to adapt them to a variety of uses. In addition to more traditional budgeting and adjustment tasks, they can also be used for things like calculating survey results, analyzing resource usage, or estimating server uptime. Adding customizable calculators that provide quick results to a website experience can provide customers with important information and keep them engaged. 

Rather than building a specialized app or plug-in for every one of these calculators, organizations can simply use a spreadsheet viewer integration to quickly create one without any specialized coding or development knowledge. When the integration is set up within their solution, they can even customize it to match their branding and make it look more like a designed application than a simple spreadsheet.

Explore the Potential of Spreadsheet Integration with PrizmDoc Cells

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Cells was originally designed to help our clients securely view and share XLSX files without any third party dependencies, but it’s increasingly being used to help improve customer experiences across a variety of applications. Get a hands-on experience with this API-driven integration to explore the potential of converting your Excel files to web applications. For a more detailed overview of what you can do with PrizmDoc Cells, sign up for a free trial.

Developers have plenty of options for viewing PDFs in their applications. With so many solutions to choose from, it’s easy to put off thinking about PDF support until much later in the development process. But doing so is often a recipe for trouble, resulting in ad hoc workarounds and settling for third-party plug-ins or native browser support that could impact application performance and security.

Directly embedding a web-based PDF viewer provides developers with much more flexibility and control over how their application manages and presents PDFs. By integrating a PDF JavaScript (PDF JS) viewer early in the development process, it’s easier to build a better user experience that doesn’t force users to take additional steps in order to interact with PDFs.

5 Benefits of an Embedded Web PDF Viewer

1. Consistent Viewing Experience

One of the original intentions of the PDF format was to ensure that documents would look the same no matter where or how they were being viewed. Unfortunately, not every viewer renders documents in the same way. More importantly, there are so many different ways of building a PDF that it can be difficult to know if it contains certain elements that are difficult for certain viewers to manage. This is typically the case with fonts and other formatting issues. While flattening the PDF can often address many of these issues, there are many instances where rasterizing the document robs it of valuable functionality (fillable form fields, for example).

By embedding a web PDF viewer directly into an application with a PDF JS integration, developers can ensure that users will always have a consistent viewing experience. Since the application will automatically open PDFs rather than handing the viewing task off to a browser plug-in or an external program on the user’s device, the document should render exactly as it was intended to look. This helps to avoid confusion and helps to enhance the user’s overall experience within the application.

2. Control Over Files

Organizations put a lot of time and resources into safeguarding confidential assets, but they can quickly undermine those efforts by failing to maintain control over their documents when sharing them. Many PDF viewing solutions allow or even require someone to download the document without having to obtain any special permissions. While this typically isn’t a major concern for public-facing documents, it could be disastrous for any shared PDFs that contain sensitive data or private information.

When developers use an embedded web PDF viewer, they allow document owners to maintain control over what people can and cannot do with shared PDFs. If they simply want someone to be able to view a document, but not edit it or download it, they can set the right permissions and restrictions to maintain control over the file. Embedding a PDF JS viewer is essential to this approach because it creates the conditions of the viewing experience.

3. Responsive Viewing

Today’s PDF viewing solutions need to account for what the viewing experience looks like on multiple screen sizes and devices. Not everyone will be reading a document on a conventional computer screen. They may want to view PDFs on a tablet or smartphone, both of which call for different viewing controls due to the nature of the device interface.

Without an embedded web PDF viewer, mobile users may not be able to readily access PDF-based content within an application. For customer facing solutions, this can seriously compromise the user experience. It’s also a major obstacle for organizations seeking to leverage an application to support a collaborative workplace. By integrating that viewing support, developers can ensure that users will be able to view PDF documents easily no matter what device they’re using.

4. No Dependencies

Many PDF viewing solutions offer extensive features, but at the cost of impacting application performance and security. That’s because they require cumbersome, memory-intensive plug-ins or complex server configurations. Even worse, they may be completely separate third-party solutions that require PDF files to be shared outside a developer’s secure application environment.

With the right PDF JS library, developers can easily integrate web PDF viewing capabilities directly into the browser without resorting to any external dependencies. Since JavaScript PDF viewers are so lightweight, they can be installed with a small amount of code that doesn’t have an impact on application performance. And since a PDF JS viewer can render PDFs within the solution, there’s no reason to risk exposing them to external software environments.

5. Easy Annotation and eSignature

Many organizations have understandably come to expect PDF viewers to come fully equipped with annotation tools that allow them to mark up files without having to transfer them to another program. They also frequently need the ability to sign documents as part of ongoing business dealings. For customer facing applications, these features are incredibly valuable because they streamline many processes for users. 

By embedding a web PDF viewer capable of supporting annotations and eSignatures, developers can quickly provide that functionality without having to build a new solution from scratch. Many annotation tools require complex backend server dependencies, so having those essential features integrated within a lightweight JavaScript PDF library can greatly improve web application performance.

Embed a Web PDF Viewer Today with Accusoft PDF Viewer

As a lightweight JavaScript PDF library, Accusoft PDF Viewer allows developers to add dynamic PDF support to their applications in a snap. While many PDF JS solutions require complicated coding to integrate properly, Accusoft PDF Viewer delivers PDF functionality to a web application with just ten lines of code.

See for yourself:

<div id="viewer">
</div> <script>
   (async () => {
     const pdfViewer = await window.Accusoft.PdfViewerControl.create({
       sourceDocument: 'https://MyURL.com/MyPDF.pdf',
       container: document.getElementById('viewer')
     });
   })();
 </script>

Accusoft PDF Viewer builds upon the versatility and reliability of the popular PDF.js open-source library, which serves as the foundation of many commercial PDF viewing solutions. From there, we used our extensive imaging technology expertise to push the boundaries in terms of rendering performance and usability. Optimized for speed and ease of use, the Standard Version of this JavaScript-based PDF viewer provides multiple benefits to developers looking to add robust viewing support without bogging down their development cycle:

  • Responsive UI: Easily view and interact with PDFs on any screen size thanks to optimized mobile controls.
  • Powerful Rendering: Smart rendering technology ensures that images remain crisp at all zoom levels.
  • Lightning-Fast Search: Get near-instant search results when trying to locate specific text, even when viewing large documents.
  • 100% Client-Side: With no server configurations or plug-ins, all viewing sessions remain entirely within a secure application environment.

For developers looking for expanding functionality, Accusoft PDF Viewer Professional version adds a number of important features:

  • UI Customization: Adjust the PDF viewer UI by adding or removing toolbar elements to create a better viewing experience.
  • Annotation: Markup PDF files with multiple annotation tools, then store or retrieve markups with an API.
  • eSignature: Create freehand signatures to sign documents on computers, tables, or smartphones.
  • White Labeling: Add customized branding to the viewer for a more consistent experience.

Accusoft PDF Viewer Standard Version can be downloaded today at no cost to quickly embed PDF features into any web-based application with just a few lines of code. When it’s time to add expanded functionality, we make it quick and easy to upgrade to Professional Version.

Check out the Accusoft PDF Viewer fact sheet for a detailed breakdown of the two versions. If you’re ready to get started, you can download Standard Version right now to try it for yourself.

Accusoft PDF Viewer builds upon the versatility and reliability of the popular PDF.js open-source library, which serves as the foundation of many commercial PDF viewing solutions. From there, we used our extensive imaging technology expertise to push the boundaries in terms of rendering performance and usability. Optimized for speed and ease of use, the Standard Version of this JavaScript-based PDF viewer provides multiple benefits to developers looking to add robust viewing support without bogging down their development cycle:

  • Responsive UI: Easily view and interact with PDFs on any screen size thanks to optimized mobile controls.
  • Powerful Rendering: Smart rendering technology ensures that images remain crisp at all zoom levels.
  • Lightning-Fast Search: Get near-instant search results when trying to locate specific text, even when viewing large documents.
  • 100% Client-Side: With no server configurations or plug-ins, all viewing sessions remain entirely within a secure application environment.

For developers looking for expanding functionality, Accusoft PDF Viewer Professional version adds a number of important features:

  • UI Customization: Adjust the PDF viewer UI by adding or removing toolbar elements to create a better viewing experience.
  • Annotation: Markup PDF files with multiple annotation tools, then store or retrieve markups with an API.
  • eSignature: Create freehand signatures to sign documents on computers, tables, or smartphones.
  • White Labeling: Add customized branding to the viewer for a more consistent experience.

Accusoft PDF Viewer Standard Version can be downloaded today at no cost to quickly embed PDF features into any web-based application with just a few lines of code. When it’s time to add expanded functionality, we make it quick and easy to upgrade to Professional Version.

Check out the Accusoft PDF Viewer fact sheet for a detailed breakdown of the two versions. If you’re ready to get started, you can download Standard Version right now to try it for yourself.

PDFs HTML embed

As digital processes become more commonplace, it’s more important than ever for organizations to have the tools in place to manage electronic documents effectively. The evolution of PDF viewing technology continues to provide new levels of flexibility for software applications. Now that HTML5 is capable of rendering PDF data within a conventional browser, developers are looking for new ways to make the viewing experience even more seamless. By embedding PDFs in HTML, they can continue to streamline document viewing and reduce the need for external software.

Why Embed a PDF in HTML?

Sharing a PDF online is far easier to do today than it was just a decade ago. For many years, the two most commonly used options were providing a link to download the file directly from a server or sending it as an attachment in an email. Once the file was downloaded, it could be opened and viewed with PDF reader software installed on a computer. This, of course, introduced numerous security risks that are associated with downloadable files and email attachments.

The widespread adoption of cloud storage has made it very convenient to share a PDF file and even manage who has access to it. And since most modern browsers can view PDFs without needing to download the file, providing a link is typically all that’s necessary to pass the file along.

While this solution is usually sufficient for the personal needs of an individual user, it’s not a practical option for even a small-scale business when it comes to public-facing document management. Organizations want to retain control over their files with respect to how they’re accessed and displayed. By embedding PDFs in HTML, they can keep their documents within their secure application environment where they have full control over how they’re managed, shared, and viewed. For developers looking to provide a seamless user experience, building options for embedded PDFs into their software is critically important.

The Value of an Integrated PDF Viewer

Since most modern browsers can utilize HTML5 to render PDF files, developers could lean on those capabilities without building a dedicated PDF viewer for their application. That decision will very quickly lead to some unpleasant complications, however. In the first place, they are leaving a lot to chance in terms of the viewing experience. Not every browser renders PDF files the same way, so it’s very possible that two different users could have two very different experiences when viewing a document. In some cases, that could mean nothing more than a missing font that’s replaced with an alternative. But in other cases, it could mean that the document doesn’t open at all or is missing important graphical elements.

This approach also forces users to make do with whatever PDF functionality is incorporated into their browser’s viewer. In most cases, that will mean subpar search performance, a lack of responsive mobile controls, and no annotation features. The browser may also have trouble with some of the less common PDF specifications, making it impossible for some users to even view a document.

By embedding a JavaScript-based PDF viewer into their application, developers can ensure that documents will display the correct way every time. Since the viewing is handled through a viewer embedded into the web application by default, it will be the same no matter what kind of browser or operating system is being used. A customizable viewer also allows developers to adjust the interface to permit or hide certain features, such as downloading or markup tools.

The open-source PDF.js library is a popular choice for many web applications, but it comes with a number of well-documented shortcomings. In addition to lacking key features like annotation, it also doesn’t support the entire PDF standard and does not provide a responsive UI for mobile devices. For developers looking to add more robust features, working with PDF.js often entails quite a bit of additional coding and engineering to build those capabilities from the ground up.

Embed PDFs in HTML with Accusoft PDF Viewer

Accusoft PDF Viewer takes the foundation of PDF.js and provides robust enhancements to meet the viewing needs of today’s applications. In addition to incredibly fast text search, expanded PDF standard support, and optimization for high-resolution displays, this lightweight SDK is also equipped with a responsive UI that adapts automatically to mobile screens. Developers can integrate essential mobile features like pinch to zoom quickly and easy, with no additional integrations or engineering required.

With no external dependencies or complicated server configurations, Accusoft PDF Viewer integrates into a web-based application with less than 10 lines of code. Once the viewer is in place, developers can embed PDFs in HTML and easily render them to provide a state-of-the-art PDF viewing experience regardless of the browser or device users have at their disposal. And since the UI can be customized to your application’s needs, there’s no reason to sacrifice control for the sake of viewing convenience.

Accusoft PDF Viewer is a JavaScript SDK that you can incorporate into your application environment quickly and easily to provide much greater viewing control and functionality than is possible with a standard browser viewer or base PDF.js library. If you’re planning to embed PDFs in HTML as part of your software solution, taking just a few moments to integrate versatile and responsive viewing tools can ensure a high-quality viewing experience. Download Accusoft PDF Viewer Standard Version today at no cost to see how easily it can transform your application’s HTML5 viewing potential.

For additional features like annotation, eSignature, and UI customization, contact one of our solutions experts to upgrade to Professional Version.

When it comes to downloading or viewing documents over the internet, PDFs have long served as a de facto standard for most organizations. Since PDFs are not a proprietary file format, there’s rarely any risk that someone will be unable to open them. However, just because PDFs have become so commonplace doesn’t mean that they all share the same characteristics. For anyone who has ever wondered why some PDFs seem to take so much longer to load than others, the answer often has less to do with connection and processing speeds as it does with the way the PDF’s content is organized.

More specifically, it’s a matter of whether or not the document is a linearized PDF.

What Is a Linearized PDF?

Sometimes called “fast web view,” linearization is a special way of saving a PDF file that organizes its internal components to make them easier to read when the file is streamed over a network connection. While a standard, non-linearized PDF stores information associated with each page across the entire file, linearized PDFs use an object tree format to consolidate page elements in an ordered, page by page basis. When a reader opens a linearized PDF, then, all of the information needed to render the first page is readily available, allowing it to load the page quickly without having to search the entire document for a specific object like an embedded font.

Originally introduced with the PDF 1.2 standard in 1996, linearized PDFs were critical to the format’s early internet success. In order to view a non-linearized PDF, the entire document needs to be downloaded or read via HTTP request-response transactions. Given the bandwidth limitations of early internet connections (often still between 28.8k and 33.6k in 1996), this created a serious bottleneck problem when it came to document viewing. While it was possible to view a document without downloading it, the multiple HTTP requests needed to do so could easily be disrupted if the connection was lost, something that was all too common in the days before reliable broadband connections were introduced.

Non-Linearized vs Linearized PDFs

To visualize the difference between a non-linearized PDF and a linearized PDF, imagine two separate people sitting down to file their business taxes. One person has all of their receipts, invoices, and financial documents scattered across their office, with some stacked in unordered piles, others crammed into unlabeled folders, and even more stuffed into assorted drawers and file cabinets. Finding and organizing all of this documentation would take almost as much time as actually filing the taxes themselves! The second person, however, has all of the records they need stored in a neatly labeled file cabinet, allowing them to retrieve everything quickly and easily.

The first example is similar to a non-linearized PDF, while the second shows how much easier it is for a reader to access the information it needs to render the file. Even better, since each page is organized in the same way, jumping to a different page in a multi-page PDF doesn’t require the reader to reload the entire file. It can simply read the current page and get everything necessary to display the PDF correctly.

Why Linearized PDFs Are Still Valuable

In a world dominated by high speed internet connections, it’s fair to wonder whether or not PDF linearization is still necessary. For small PDFs that are only a few pages, linearization may not be essential, but when it comes to larger documents, linearization can still deliver substantial performance and user experience benefits.

Consider, for instance, a document that consists of several hundred, or even several thousand, pages. Loading that entire document and keeping it cached may be possible, but it’s an inefficient use of processing and bandwidth resources. With a linearized PDF, a reader typically encounters a linearization directory and hint tables at the top of the document, which provides it with instructions on where to locate any necessary resources within the file. After loading the hint tables and the first page, the reader stops the download process rather than opening the entire file. When the user navigates to another page, the reader can quickly reference the hint tables and jump to that page.

This ensures that the reader is only ever loading the pages that actually need to be displayed, which helps to conserve memory, processing resources, and bandwidth. For mobile devices with limited file and cache storage, linearized PDFs are much easier to manage than their non-linearized counterparts. They also provide some protection against network interruptions, which could make it difficult to download and view an entire document.

How to Linearize PDFs

Although the linearization process is well laid out in the current PDF standards documentation, many PDFs are created using software that doesn’t automatically linearize the content. More importantly, some linearized PDFs are “broken” by a process called incremental saving, which saves minor updates at the end of the file, rather than changing existing structure. Over time, too much incremental saving can undermine the effectiveness of a linearized PDF.

The best way to resolve such problems and linearize the PDF is to save a new, linearized version of the file using PDF editing and conversion tools.

Take Control of PDFs with PrizmDoc

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc provides a broad range of document functionality that allows applications to more effectively create, convert, and compress PDF files.

For a closer look at PrizmDoc and to see its powerful document processing capabilities in action, download a free trial today.

native excel support

Despite the explosive growth of big data and sophisticated analytics platforms, a 2019 study by Deloitte found that 67 percent of business leaders are not quite comfortable using them to inform decision making. For many organizations, spreadsheets remain the preferred tool for managing data and evaluating trends. Developers looking to build the next generation of business applications can accommodate those tendencies by integrating native spreadsheet support for Microsoft Excel workbooks.

Excel Worksheets vs Excel Workbooks

Although sometimes referred to interchangeably or described broadly as spreadsheets, there is a key distinction between an Excel worksheet and an Excel workbook. A worksheet consists of only one spreadsheet while a workbook contains multiple different spreadsheets separated by tabs.

The difference may not be very important when viewing or sharing XLSX files natively in Microsoft Excel, but it can create serious challenges when rendering those files in another application. Without some way of accurately rendering dynamic spreadsheet data, viewers are often forced to resort to a static print preview image. This process makes the file viewable, but also leaves it “flattened” because all interactive elements are removed from the spreadsheet cells.

If the workbook contains worksheets with linked data (that is, cell data from one sheet is affected by cell data from another sheet), it’s critical that a viewing solution preserves the dynamic aspects of the file. The advantage of a spreadsheet is that it can serve as a working document. Without the ability to interact with it, users might as well simply copy and paste the data into a text document.

Managing Excel Workbooks with PrizmDoc Cells

PrizmDoc Cells provides several options for managing Excel workbooks, making it easy to transition back and forth between XLSX format and web browser viewing. Once a proxy route is set up within the application to send API calls to the PrizmDoc Cells server, three different commands can be used to manage Excel workbooks.

Upload Workbook

This API call adds a new XLSX file for viewing and editing. When a document is uploaded to the system, the server assigns a unique workbook ID to it so it can be found and rendered in the application’s viewer in the future. After uploading a workbook, a new session can be created using the workbook ID for viewing and editing purposes. 

Download Workbook

When PrizmDoc Cells displays a spreadsheet, it renders the XLSX file itself, but it doesn’t make any alterations to that file. As each session makes edits to the workbook, those changes are associated with the document ID rather than the original XLSX file, which preserves the integrity of the original spreadsheet. At some point, however, those edits may need to be saved into a new Excel workbook. 

The download API call converts the current session document so it can be downloaded as an XLSX file. File availability can be set during the download process to control who will have access to the new workbook.

Delete Workbook

Old versions of workbooks often need to be deleted for security reasons, usually because they contain confidential data. Since the original XLSX file remains safely within application storage, there often isn’t much sense in retaining workbooks IDs that aren’t being used. The delete API call removes a workbook ID from the server. Once removed in this way, the workbook cannot be viewed, edited, or downloaded by PrizmDoc Cells.

Preserving Workbook Functionality

Since PrizmDoc Cells natively renders information contained in an XLSX file, it retains the dynamic elements that make spreadsheet workbooks so useful to organizations. Not only does it preserve proprietary business logic and formulas, but it also maintains the integrity of this information across multiple worksheets. Cell content can still be searched to quickly locate important text or data throughout the workbook.

For situations where proprietary formulas need to be protected, PrizmDoc Cells allows users to upload XLSX workbooks as values-only files, with all spreadsheet formulas removed. Also, any cells locked in an uploaded XLSX file will remain locked in PrizmDoc Cells to preserve workbook security.

True Spreadsheet Workbook Support for Your Applications

Many organizations continue to depend upon spreadsheet workbooks to manage their business. By providing feature-rich workbook support within their applications, developers can help them retain control over their proprietary spreadsheet formulas without sacrificing the functionality they expect from Excel. 

PrizmDoc Cells makes it easier than ever to share spreadsheet workbooks without having to rely upon Microsoft Excel dependencies. Shared XLSX files can remain safely within a secure application environment to prevent unauthorized downloads or troublesome version confusion. Get a first-hand look at how PrizmDoc Cells can enhance your application in our extensive online demo.

JS PDF viewer Accusoft

Document viewing capabilities are no longer a specialized feature that require dedicated applications. Thanks to powerful software integrations, developers can now build PDF viewing into their solutions to create a better user experience and streamline workflows. The growing popularity of mobile devices, however, has posed a few challenges to development teams accustomed to building an exclusively desktop experience, especially when it comes to JavaScript PDF viewers. That’s why one of Accusoft’s key development goals has focused on making a JS PDF viewer responsive to mobile screens.

The Increasingly Mobile Internet

Since 2017, mobile devices have accounted for about half of global internet traffic. This trend has been fuelled primarily by a combination of improved cellular network coverage and the ever-increasing processing capabilities of the average mobile device. It’s hardly a surprise, considering that the latest smartphones are often the most powerful computing device people own. Even for consumers who own desktop or laptops as well, mobile devices make it easy to access internet services on the go, allowing them to manage finances, collaborate on work tasks, or utilize eLearning resources (or watch cat videos).

Today’s customers expect organizations to provide applications that deliver a consistent experience across all devices, regardless of screen size. The era of designing software exclusively for desktop computers and treating mobile support as an afterthought is long gone. If an application’s mobile experience doesn’t at least match that of the competition, customers will quickly make a change.

Viewing Challenges on Mobile Devices

Mobile devices can present a few challenges for application developers, especially when it comes to viewing documents like PDFs. While there are many PDF reader apps available for mobile platforms, they typically require users to download a file to local storage or to a cloud service in order to open a document. In addition to being inconvenient, this often leads to some presentation problems because the reader may not render the PDF exactly as the creator intended, especially if it’s not linearized.

Developers could, of course, rely upon the mobile browser to display documents, but this also introduces problems. As with external reader apps, the browser viewer may not render the document as intended, which creates an uneven user experience across multiple platforms. More importantly, the browser’s interface may lack key controls that enhance the viewing experience on mobile devices, especially if the viewer is little more than a basic PDF.js library.

PDF.js and Mobile PDF Viewing

The open-source PDF.js library was originally designed for Mozilla’s Firefox browser, but it has become the basis for a broad range of PDF viewers due to its flexibility. That’s partly why the Accusoft PDF Viewer uses PDF.js as its foundation. However, one area where that versatility is sorely lacking is with regards to mobile support.

More specifically, PDF.js doesn’t supply a UI that is responsive for different screen types. It was designed to render PDFs to a conventional computer display and provides the expected tools needed to navigate a document using a keyboard and mouse interface. Even if developers were to incorporate the PDF.js library into their application, they would still need to build a new user interface for mobile devices. Otherwise, key mobile viewing features like touch scrolling and pinch to zoom would be handled not by the viewer, but by the device’s touchscreen interface. 

While this might sound like a small distinction, it can actually create serious problems when it comes to rendering the document at different zoom levels. Essential features like text search may also be rendered useless by the poor interface, and the lack of thumbnail previews could make navigating the document tedious.

Making a JS PDF Viewer Responsive

Today’s developers need viewing integrations that offer out-of-the-box mobile support to deliver a consistent viewing experience. That’s why we built upon the foundation of PDF.js to create a responsive viewer interface that instantly adapts to any screen size. Easily integrated into any web-based application, the Accusoft PDF Viewer immediately determines what type of device is being used when a document is opened. If it’s a mobile device, the viewer replaces the controls used for desktop viewing with dedicated mobile controls designed for a touchscreen. 

Key touch features like pinch-to-zoom allow users to interact with PDFs on mobile and tablet devices just as easily as they could with a mouse and computer screen. That usability is the key component of making a JS PDF viewer responsive. Mobile screens should never be treated like conventional screens. By integrating a mobile-ready viewer into their web application, developers can ensure viewing consistency across platforms while also allowing people to access documents where they want and when they want them.

Integrate Responsive PDF Viewing in a Snap

Building an application that includes a JS PDF viewer responsive to mobile screens is easier than ever thanks to Accusoft PDF Viewer. As a flexible JavaScript PDF library, it integrates quickly into any web-based application with just a few lines of code and no complicated server configurations. Our industry-leading expertise with imaging technology has allowed us to make substantial improvements to the way PDF.js renders PDF documents and ensure high levels of resolution regardless of zoom level or screen DPI.

To find out what Accusoft PDF Viewer can do for your application, download the Standard Version today at no cost and test its powerful viewing features in your development environment. With only a few lines of code, it’s the fastest way to add responsive PDF viewing to your web-based software solutions.

For expanded features like annotation markup tools, eSignature capabilities, UI customization, and white labeling, consider upgrading to Accusoft PDF Viewer Professional Version. Download our fact sheet for a detailed breakdown in available features.

 

SmartZone powershell
 

Continuous innovation has allowed Accusoft to build sustained success over the course of three decades. Much of that innovation comes from talented developers creating novel solutions to everyday problems, many of which go on to become patented technologies that provide the company with an edge over competitors. 

Others, however, are the byproduct of looking at problems from a different perspective or using existing technologies in unique ways. Accusoft supports both approaches by hosting special “hackathon” events each year. These events encourage developers to spend time working on their own unique projects or try out ideas they think may have potential but have never been implemented.

For this year’s hackathon, I took a closer look at how our SmartZone SDK could be implemented as part of an automation solution within a .NET environment without creating an entire application from the ground up. What I discovered was that PowerShell modules offer a quick and easy way to deploy character recognition for limited, unique use cases.

.NET and PowerShell

One of the underestimated abilities of the .NET infrastructure is support loading and executing assemblies out of box from the command line using a shell module. Although there are many shell variants available, PowerShell comes preinstalled on most Windows machines and is the only tool required to make the scripts and keep them running. PowerShell also runs on Linux and macOS, which makes it a true cross-platform task automation solution for inventive developers who crave flexibility in their scripting tools. 

Incorporating the best features of other popular shells, PowerShell consists of a command-line shell, a scripting language, and a configuration management framework. One of the unique features of PowerShell, however, is that unlike most shells which can only accept and return text, it can do the same with .NET objects. This means PowerShell modules can be used to build, test, and deploy solutions as well as manage any technology as part of an extensible automation platform.

Implementing SmartZone Character Recognition

Accusoft’s SmartZone technology allows developers to incorporate advanced zonal character recognition to capture both machine-printed and hand-printed data from document fields. It also supports full page optical character recognition (OCR) and allows developers to set confidence values to determine when manual review of recognition results are necessary. 

Implementing those features into an application through a third-party integration is the best way to incorporate recognition capabilities, but there are some use cases where they might need to be used for general tasks outside of a conventional workflow. A number of Accusoft customers, for instance, had inquired about simple ways to use some of SmartZone’s features in their existing process automation software without having to spend weeks of development time integrating those capabilities on a larger scale.

Thanks to the versatility of PowerShell, there’s no reason to build such an application from scratch. SmartZone’s zonal recognition technology can easily be incorporated into any .NET environment with just a few snippets of code. PowerShell syntax itself is not very difficult to understand and for a quick start it should be enough to use a Windows Notepad application, but we recommend using your favorite integrated development environment (IDE) for a better experience.

Getting Started

First, you need to download SmartZoneV7.0DotNet-AnyCPU.zip from the Accusoft SmartZone download page and unpack it to any suitable directory. This bundle contains all required binaries to run SmartZone.

Create a Simple.ps1 file inside the unpacked directory and start typing your script:


using namespace System.Drawing
using namespace System.Reflection
using namespace Accusoft.SmartZoneOCRSdk

# Load assemblies.
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Drawing
$szPath = Resolve-Path ".\bin\netstandard2.0\Accusoft.SmartZoneOCR.Net.dll"
[Assembly]::LoadFrom($szPath)

# Create a SmartZone instance.
$szObj = [SmartZoneOCR]::new()
$szAssetsPath = Resolve-Path ".\bin\assets"
$szObj.OCRDataPath = $szAssetsPath.Path

# Licensing
# $szObj.Licensing.SetSolutionName("Contact Accusoft for getting the license.")
# $szObj.Licensing.SetSolutionKey(+1, 800, 875, 7009)
# $szObj.Licensing.SetOEMLicenseKey("https://www.accusoft.com/company/legal/licensing/");

# Load test image.
$bitmapPath = Resolve-Path ".\demos\images\OCR\MultiLine.bmp"
[Bitmap] $bitmap = [Image]::FromFile($bitmapPath.Path)

# Recognize the image and print the result.
$result = $szObj.Reader.AnalyzeField([Bitmap] $bitmap);
Write-Host $result.Text

# Free the resources.
$bitmap.Dispose();
$szObj.Dispose();


This simple code snippet allows you to use SmartZone together with PowerShell in task automation processes like recognizing screenshots, email attachments, and images downloaded by the web browser. It can also be deployed in other similar cases where the advantages of PowerShell modules and cmdlets can help to achieve results faster than writing an application from scratch.

Another Hackathon Success

Identifying a new way to deploy existing Accusoft solutions is one of the reasons why the hackathon event was first created. This script may not reinvent the wheel, but it will help developers save time and money in a lot of situations, which means fewer missed deadlines and faster time to market for software products. Developing unique approaches to existing problems can be difficult with deadlines and coding demands hanging over a developer’s head, so Accusoft’s hackathons are incredibly important for helping the company stay at the forefront of innovation. 

To learn more about how that innovation can help your team implement powerful new features into your applications, talk to one of our solutions experts today!

digital vault application

Security is everything for organizations when it comes to their sensitive data assets. Whether it’s vital documents, account passwords, or proprietary financial formulas, essential business information needs to be well-protected as companies continue to incorporate digital platforms into their operations. Developers can support this critical goal by providing secure digital vault applications that allow their customers to manage and use information assets without exposing them to unnecessary risks.

The heightened emphasis on security has made digital vault services quite popular in recent years. In order to maximize the potential of these security platforms, however, developers must integrate the right tools for managing multiple file types ranging from standard documents to complex financial spreadsheets.

What is a Digital Vault?

Much like its physical counterpart, a digital vault is a secure repository for storing vital assets in one easy-to-manage and fully-encrypted location. In some respects, these platforms are similar to information management services or cloud-based storage, but they set themselves apart by emphasizing security and access control. Digital vaults are frequently used for estate planning thanks to their ability to securely store account log-in information and vital documents, but they’re also popular with high-net worth individuals and organizations that need a safe place for sensitive financial data.

The core feature of a digital vault is its ability to prevent unauthorized access to materials stored inside them. They do this by strictly monitoring access rights at multiple levels. Just because someone has access to the vault itself, for instance, doesn’t mean they have access to everything it contains. The files and documents stored within the digital vault can all be set with their own access permissions. These controls mirror those used in a physical bank vault, such as:

  • Requiring manual authorization from an administrator to access data.
  • Implementing dual key control mechanisms.
  • Limiting access to certain times of day.
  • Segmenting access to relevant assets only.

Managing Digital Vault Information

Digital vaults also make the process of managing data much more secure. Since all of the assets stored within the vault are protected by encryption, they can be shared through a portal rather than downloaded, copied, or transmitted over poorly secured channels like email. The data itself never leaves the protective confines of the vault, and the security controls track who has been granted access when files are shared. This makes it easy to monitor activity and ensure that confidential files are not broadly distributed.

In order to facilitate this access, however, digital vault developers need to build viewing and editing tools into their applications. Without the ability to open and view a document within the web-based portal, for instance, users will be forced to rely on external software. This defeats the whole purpose of a digital vault, as it exposes the file to whatever security vulnerabilities that application might possess.

Integrating HTML5 viewing capabilities into their vault’s web portal allows developers to let their customers review documents and even make annotation markups without having to remove the file from a secure, encrypted environment. For most documents and images, this is a relatively straightforward process using a series of API calls to render the file within the browser.

The Challenge of Excel Spreadsheets

Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, however, frequently pose a major challenge to digital vault platforms. Unlike documents, spreadsheets are often designed to be interactive and can contain sensitive financial calculations within cell fields. Simply sharing a static, print preview image of a spreadsheet might be helpful for reviewing financial records, but it’s not very useful to someone who needs to enter fresh data into the formulas to calculate new results.

While the XLSX file could be made available for download to anyone who is authorized to use it, this defeats the purpose of having it stored in a digital vault. Not only would it be impossible to track the downloaded file, which creates serious data security risks, but allowing multiple copies of the file to proliferate will quickly lead to version confusion.

Enhancing Spreadsheet Functionality with PrizmDoc Cells

Digital vault developers can easily solve their spreadsheet challenges by integrating Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Cells into their application. A completely web-based spreadsheet viewer and editor, PrizmDoc Cells provides native XLSX file support without any external dependencies. The API-based integration allows users to open their existing Excel files to view, edit, and add comments completely within the application’s web portal. PrizmDoc Cells provides a familiar interface that developers can customize to meet the specific needs of their customers.

That same customization extends to the spreadsheet elements themselves. A digital vault provider may not want to allow users to have full access to every element of an Excel file. For instance, an organization may be fine with allowing someone to enter new data and calculate results in the spreadsheet, but not want anyone to be able to view the proprietary formulas buried within the cell fields. When integrating PrizmDoc Cells, developers can control what aspects of the XLSX file are actually shared. This makes it easy to keep formulas and other data locked in place within the spreadsheet and secure from unauthorized viewing.

Unlock Your Digital Vault’s Potential with PrizmDoc Cells

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Cells gives digital vault developers the ability to control how spreadsheet files are shared and managed within their secure application environment. By integrating native Excel support, they can sever their dependency on Microsoft Office and other potentially insecure software platforms and enhance the value of their digital vault services. With PrizmDoc Cells, their customers can easily access, review, and edit their spreadsheets without exposing them to additional security risks or version confusion.

To learn more about the versatile functionality of PrizmDoc Cells, check out our detailed fact sheet for an overview of critical features and use cases. If you’re ready to test the integration in your application environment, download a free trial today in an easy-to-deploy Docker file.