Building the Perfect Universal Document Viewer · Building the Perfect Document Viewer: 10...

mobility

powerful server module

annotation& redaction

speed

localization

view & managehundreds of differentdocuments & images

variety of tools

powerfulfeatures

APIs

easy installation

Building the Perfect Universal Document Viewer

10 Must-Have Features

If you’re reading this, you probably have a decent idea of what a universal document viewer is. If not, well, a universal document viewer allows users to view many disparate document and image formats within one single interface, eliminating the need to individually open separate applications, such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat, to view files.

And while there are many document viewers available—some even for free—they are not created equally. A user might be able to view a PDF within their internet browser, for instance, but not be able to manage and manipulate the document due to feature limitations. So what do the power users do—the users who must manage documents daily for their organization? For these users, documents aren’t just something that need to be viewed, they also need to be created, managed, manipulated, distributed, and stored—among many other things.

Excessive time spent processing documents is expensive for these users and their organizations. The right document viewing technology, however, can greatly enhance operational efficiency and business success. So what would the perfect document viewer look like then? What bells and whistles would it need to maximize the return on investment for the organization? What environments would it run in? What devices would it be compatible with?

In this eBook, we will describe all of the features that would comprise a powerful, sophisticated document viewer until we have envisioned the perfect solution. Perhaps through this exercise we can will one into existence!

Building the Perfect Document Viewer: 10 Must-Have Features

Building the Perfect Universal Document Viewer: 10 Must-Have Features 1

With so many users working on different platforms and different devices, there is really only one thing almost every user has in common when it comes to their day-to-day operations: a web browser. Everyone today relies on the internet for their work, but they access it in many different ways. From the divide between Mac and PC operating systems to the tablet and smartphone users, everyone is working in different environments and from different devices.

Therefore, the perfect document viewer would run directly within any web browser, eliminating the need for any application downloads or client-side installations. This would ensure that users always have immediate access to their documents and images no matter where they are.

The biggest benefit of a document viewer that runs in web-browser is mobile document access. A pure HTML web viewer for mobile—when optimized to leverage touch-based interactions and momentum-based scrolling—provides many benefits for companies, employees, and customers alike. The latter enjoy enhanced access and faster acquisition of information with the ability to view and react to documents via their device of choice. Meanwhile, companies can make their employees more efficient by allowing them to access data and get their work done from almost any location. This can help earn customer loyalty by enhancing an organization’s ability to provide critical information while on the road, at a coffee shop, in their automobile or even in bed.

Above all, an HTML5 viewer is a trouble-free solution for users as well as IT administrators. With an HTML5 viewer that incorporates the correct server-side processing software, IT professionals don’t need to worry about whether or not everyone in their organization has the latest version of Adobe or Microsoft Word installed on their devices.


Mobility: A Pure HTML5 Viewer1

Before a pure HTML viewer with mobile capabilities can become realized, the perfect document viewer needs to be paired with powerful server modules to deliver a complete end-to-end viewing solution.

Similar to users accessing many different devices, many organizations run their platforms and applications in different environments. Ideally, a server module for a viewer needs to be made available for multiple configurations and environments, including Java and .NET.

A multi-faceted server module opens up the possibilities for a perfect document viewer by:

l Decompressing and breaking up multi-page documents on the server and sending only the individual pages requested by the user

l Creating individual thumbnail images of only the pages shown in the thumbnail pane, reducing download bandwidth requirements

l Creating virtual documents and only producing and downloading the specifically requested pages, not the whole document

lCaching data on the server and preventing redundant calls to the repository

l Searching for text

lRedacting througout the document

lConverting documents to desired formats

lPrinting from the network

l Storing outputted pages and documents into the repository

lProviding access to geographically distributed workgroups

The perfect viewer would then combine this powerful server module with the aforementioned HTML5 technology to deliver a powerful and sophisticated universal document viewer that runs in any browser and provides users with all the features listed in the rest of this eBook…

A powerful server module


2

For a document viewer to truly be perfect, it would need to be able to view and manage hundreds of different documents and image formats. Everything from popular formats such as PDF, Microsoft Word, HTML and TIFF—along with business-specific formats like AFP and MO:DCA—would need to be easily accessible all from the same window. In today’s business environments, users are interacting with many disparate file formats during any given day—something the perfect document viewer must be able to accommodate.

View hundreds of different document and image formats


3

jpg

xls

tiff

pdf

png

docmo:dca

afp

While some people might only need to view documents, there are many users across an organization who need sophisticated tools to manage the variety of documents coming across their virtual desk.

An ideal document viewer would provide these users with tools within the viewer such as:

Manage documents with a variety of tools


Document 1 Document 2 Document 3 Search

Tnote

page 2

With so many users working on di�erent platforms and di�erent devices, there is really only one thing almost every user has in common when it comes to their day-to-day operations: a web browser. Everyone today relies on the internet for their work, but they access it in many di�erent ways. From the divide between Mac and PC operating systems to the tablet and smartphone users, everyone is working in di�erent environments and from di�erent devices.


The biggest bene�t of a document viewer that runs in web-browser is mobile document access. A pure HTML web viewer for mobile—when optimized to leverage touch-based interactions and momentum-based scrolling—provides many bene�ts for companies, employees, and customers alike. The latter enjoy enhanced access and faster acquisition of information with the ability to view and react to documents via their device of choice. Meanwhile, companies can make their employees more e�cient by allowing them to access data and get their work done from almost any location. This can help earn customer loyalty by enhancing an organization’s ability to provide critical information while on the road, at a co�ee shop, in their automobile or even in bed.

Above all, a HTML5 viewer is a trouble-free solution for users as well as IT administrators. With a HTML5 viewer that incorporates the correct server-side processing software, IT professionals don’t need to worry about whether or not everyone in their organization has the latest version of Adobe or Microsoft Word installed on their devices.

With so many users working on di�erent platforms and di�erent devices, there is really only one thing almost every user has in common when it comes to their day-to-day operations: a web browser. Everyone today relies on the internet for their work, but they access it in many di�erent ways. From the divide between Mac and PC operating systems to the tablet and smartphone users, everyone is working in di�erent environments and from di�erent devices.







Above all, a HTML5 viewer is a trouble-free solution for users as well as IT




Tabbed Windows: Similar to thumbnails, tabbed windows allow

the user to easily navigate back and forth between multiple documents all

within the same window, streamlining processing

and review.

Text Extraction: Users should be able to easily copy and extract

text from searchable documents by dragging

over the desired text, copying to the clipboard, and then pasting safely and securely elsewhere.

Search:

Text searching capabilities are an essential tool to

document management. If a user can’t easily search

for content, the entire document workflow will

slow down. With text search, users can productively and

efficiently access critical information by entering a query into a simple search field and cycling through the highlighted results.

Thumbnails:

With multiple documents often needing to be

reviewed at any given time, the ideal document viewer

would provide the users with quick and easy ways to toggle back and forth between documents and pages. A thumbnail panel

allows users to simply navigate the pages within

a document using a review bar on the side of the

viewer.

4

l Splitting documents

lReordering pages

lAdding pages

lMerging documents

lExtracting pages

lDeleting pages

In a perfect world, documents would never have to be manipulated. They’d simply come in the correct order with the right brightness and a bow on top. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case and document managers need the ability to manipulate documents before distributing or archiving. The perfect document viewer would provide these users with a variety of features to modify existing documents by:

Manipulate documents with powerful features


12

3

13

2

12 1

12

3

For low quality pages and images that are hard to view, picture controls would be crucial for enhancing readability. An ideal viewer would provide the user with controls to adjust the brightness, contrast, and gamma of any specific page or image.

5

+ =

12

32

1 1

1

2 2

2

34

=

12 2

13

3

- =

1 1 12

23

+&

l Brightness lContrast lGamma

Annotation & Redaction Functionality

In order to manage document workflow, content gatekeepers need to be able to annotate and redact documents. Typical annotations often consist of marking revisions or highlighting and underlining passages, while more detailed notes would require the use of “sticky notes” or “rubber stamping” tools. This type of workflow is typical for corporate forms and claims processing. These users need to be able to collaborate on documents and images by adding and removing content without affecting the original document or previous annotations.

The perfect document viewer would provide users with sophisticated tools to annotate and redact content, as well as:

l Control Access to Sensitive Information: The ideal web viewer would offer redaction capabilities that allow users to effectively hide sensitive data such as social security numbers, credit card information and account numbers from those unauthorized to view the information. This element simplifies document sharing and greatly reduces the possibility of confidential information falling into the wrong hands. Watermark overlays could be applied to a single page or a range of pages within a document for content protection.

l Inherit User Permission Levels: Annotations and redactions would inherit user permission levels already set up within the content management system managed by the organization’s IT department, ensuring confidential information is only seen by approved users. When page manipulations and annotations are completed, the document could be saved and committed to the repository, or even exported or distributed depending on user permissions.

l Share & Save Different Versions of Documents: In a typical workflow situation, the original document generally needs to stay pristine with only copies of the original being redacted. How electronic documents are redacted is very critical. In some cases, the redaction obscures underlying text. An error in processing the redaction might unintentionally reveal that text to the wrong party. Thus, it is important that users be able to create secure versions or renditions of the document for use in external applications, all while being able to easily manage and modify document annotations or image annotations easily. After manipulating pages, a user should be able to save and share a version of the new document, while retaining a copy of the old one for archival purposes.


6

Employment Application L

ast N

am

e, F

irst Initia

l:

Personal Information

Name (Last, First, MI)

Street address

City, State, Zip

Home phone number Work phone number

Facsimile number E-mail address

Social security number Driver’s license number

Employment Desired

Position applied for

How did you hear about this position?

Date available for work Desired hours

Education

Name and Address of

School

Course of

Study

Total Years

of Study

Degree/

Diploma

High

School

Today’s D

ate:

Undergraduate

College

Graduate/

Professional

Other

List any seminars, classe s or other education not listed above which may help qualify

you for this position :

Smith, John, A

309 Waverly Oaks Rd

Waltham, MA 02452

617-607-2010

[email protected]

012-34-5678

CONFIDENTIAL

note:please fill outboth sides ofapplication

Speed

The perfect viewer is fast—really fast. A variety of factors would allow a viewer to be this fast…

l Pure HTML: Being able to easily access files through a standard web browser eliminates the need to install, maintain, and use multiple applications to view different document and image formats.

l SVG Support: Unlike Bitmap images—which are just a bunch of pixels—scalable vector graphics (SVG) is a format that draws images with lines and arcs for display. Since any line or arc can be described as a simple set of parameters that include length, thickness, color, curvature and position, any vector document can be described by a small number of XML instructions. Therefore, SVG drawings and images can be encoded in far less space than bitmap images. They can also describe any length line or arc without increasing the size of the document, whereas bitmap formats–depending on the format sophistication–can increase with line length or complexity because more pixels may need to be encoded. The results of using SVG are both crisp images and smaller document sizes (which accelerate document workflow), as well as reduced server memory requirements and computation (which means faster server response and greater capacity).

l Page on Demand Technology: Page on Demand technology eliminates the need to download entire documents prior to viewing by quickly and accurately delivering only the page(s) requested by the user. Similarly, server-side caching and file processing eliminates repeated calls to the repository.


7

PureHTML

SVG P.O.D.

aa a

SVG vs Bitmap

Localization Capabilities

The perfect document viewer would cater to users all across the globe, regardless of their location, with auto-detection and right to left language support:

Auto Detect Proper Language: Intelligent localization capabilities would enable the user interface to auto-detect browser settings and display in the proper language.

Right to Left Language Support: Right to left language functionality would make it easy for users to view, edit, and annotate documents such as Microsoft Word and PDFs with right to left scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew, and other languages that require contextual shaping.


8

發送文件

ドキュメントを送信

enviar el documento

enviar documento

send document

envoyer des documents

ךמסמה תא חולשל

Dokument senden

отправить документ

One size does not fit all and almost every organization has unique needs when it comes to document management. The perfect document viewer would be flexible and offer a configurable interface that could be leveraged by the organization.

A wide range of API samples would provide developers with the ability to call specific viewer functions and tailor the viewer specifically to their organization’s unique needs. The samples would give them the ability to easily create their own function buttons to invoke existing functions, such as search, page flipping, export, print, save, and image controls (zoom, rotate, etc.).

This support would give businesses the ability to combine many different critical functions into one easy-to-use web application. Access to APIs would also allow organizations to maintain a consistent look and feel across their web presence by customizing the viewer’s aesthetics, making the user experience more seamless and reducing support issues.

Configurable Interface: APIs


9

note

choose your design:

T

choose your functions:

Last but not least, the perfect viewer would not be cumbersome to install or a burden for the IT Department. It should be a quick and easy install, taking less than ten minutes and requiring no additional servers.

An easy installation


10

Document 1

Document 2

Document 3

Search

Tnote

page 2

With so many users working on di erent platforms and di erent

devices, there is really only one thing almost every user has in common

when it comes to their day-to-day operations: a web browser. Everyone

today relies on the internet for their work, but they access it in many

di�erent ways. From the divide between Mac and PC operating systems

to the tablet and smartphone users, everyone is working in di�erent

environments and from di�erent devices.

Therefore, the perfect document viewer would run directly within any

web browser, eliminating the need for any application downloads or

client-side installations. This would ensure that users always have

immediate access to their documents and images no matter where

they are. The biggest bene�t of a document viewer that runs in web-browser is

mobile document access. A pure HTML web viewer for mobile—when

optimized to leverage touch-based interactions and momentum-based

scrolling—provides many bene�ts for companies, employees, and

customers alike. The latter enjoy enhanced access and faster acquisition

of information with the ability to view and react to documents via their

device of choice. Meanwhile, companies can make their employees

more e�cient by allowing them to access data and get their work done

from almost any location. This can help earn customer loyalty by

enhancing an organization’s ability to provide critical information while

on the road, at a co�ee shop, in their automobile or even in bed.

Above all, a HTML5 viewer is a trouble-free solution for users as well as

IT administrators. With a HTML5 viewer that incorporates the correct

server-side processing software, IT professionals don’t need to worry

about whether or not everyone in their organization has the latest

version of Adobe or Microsoft Word installed on their devices.

With so many users working on di�erent platforms and di�erent devices,

there is really only one thing almost every user has in common when it

comes to their day-to-day operations: a web browser. Everyone today

relies on the internet for their work, but they access it in many di�erent

ways. From the divide between Mac and PC operating systems to the

tablet and smartphone users, everyone is working in di�erent

environments and from di�erent devices.




immediate access to their documents and images no matter where they

are. The biggest bene�t of a document viewer that runs in web-browser is




customers alike. The latter enjoy enhanced access and faster acquisition of

information with the ability to view and react to documents via their

device of choice. Meanwhile, companies can make their employees more

e�cient by allowing them to access data and get their work done from

almost any location. This can help earn customer loyalty by enhancing an

organization’s ability to provide critical information while on the road, at a

co�ee shop, in their automobile or even in bed.


administrators. With a HTML5 viewer that incorporates the correct


about whether or not everyone in their organization has the latest version

of Adobe or Microsoft Word installed on their devices.

The biggest bene�t of a document viewer that runs in web-browser is















are. The biggest bene�t of a document viewer that runs in web-browser is











Above all, a HTML5 viewer is a trouble-free solution for users as well as IT Therefore, the perfect document viewer would run directly within any




are.

The biggest bene�t of a document viewer that runs in web-browser is












administrators. With a HTML5 viewer that incorporates the correct


about whether or not everyone in their organization has the latest version

of Adobe or Microsoft Word installed on their devices.

When shopping for document viewers, it is important to make sure it has the features your organization requires to effectively manage its documents. Many document viewers on the market might possess a handful of the aforementioned features, but very few can say they have all of the above.

Perhaps more important than finding the *perfect* viewer, is finding the viewer best suited to your organization’s specific needs. A powerful, flexible document viewer gives your IT department, developers, and users the best chance at a perfect solution.

Closing


Document 1 Document 2 Document 3 Search

Tnote

page 2

With so many users working on di erent platforms and di erent devices, there is really only one thing almost every user has in common when it comes to their day-to-day operations: a web browser. Everyone today relies on the internet for their work, but they access it in many di erent ways. From the divide between Mac and PC operating systems to the tablet and smartphone users, everyone is working in di erent environments and from di erent devices.


The biggest bene�t of a document viewer that runs in web-browser is mobile document access. A pure HTML web viewer for mobile—when optimized to leverage touch-based interactions and momentum-based scrolling—provides many bene�ts for companies, employees, and customers alike. The latter enjoy enhanced access and faster acquisition of information with the ability to view and react to documents via their device of choice. Meanwhile, companies can make their employees more e�cient by allowing them to access data and get their work done from almost any location. This can help earn customer loyalty by enhancing an organization’s ability to provide critical information while on the road, at a co ee shop, in their automobile or even in bed.


With so many users working on di erent platforms and di erent devices, there is really only one thing almost every user has in common when it comes to their day-to-day operations: a web browser. Everyone today relies on the internet for their work, but they access it in many di erent ways. From the divide between Mac and PC operating systems to the tablet and smartphone users, everyone is working in di erent environments and from di erent devices.











powerfulfeatures

view & managehundreds of differentdocuments & images

easy installation

powerful server moduleannotation& redaction

localization

mobility

APIs

variety of tools

speed

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[email protected]

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