SoftIcon Document Viewer – Embed PDF, Word & Excel Files

Description

SoftIcon Document Viewer adds a Document Viewer block to the block editor. Pick a PDF, Word (DOCX), Excel (XLSX, XLS) or CSV file from the Media Library, upload one, or paste a link.

• PDF in the page – the pages show one below the other, sharp on phones and retina screens. Only the pages near the screen are drawn, and only the parts of the file they need are downloaded, so long PDFs open fast.
• Word as real text – a DOCX file becomes real HTML with its headings, lists, tables, images, headers and footers, so visitors can search it and screen readers can read it. On a computer it looks like Word’s pages; on a phone the text flows to the screen width so it stays readable.
• Excel that looks like Excel – XLSX and XLS files show with their sheet tabs, number, currency, percent and date formats, merged cells and links. Only the used cells are shown, and the header row and row numbers stay in view while visitors scroll. Choose which sheet opens first.
• CSV as a table – the first row is the header (or turn that off), and values stay exactly as written, so codes like 00123 keep their zeros.
• Toolbar – zoom for PDF and Word, the page number for PDF, fullscreen for every file, and the Download button. Every button works with the keyboard and screen readers; turn the ones you do not need off.
• Your size, your colors – the whole document grows with the page, or it scrolls inside a box of the height you set. Wide and full width are supported. Pick the background, border, toolbar and table header colors.
• Live preview – the block editor shows the real file, not a placeholder.
• No outside viewer – nothing is sent to Google or Microsoft, so it works on intranets, local sites and members-only sites.
• No cookies, no tracking – the plugin sends nothing anywhere.
• Loads only where it is used – the viewer’s code loads only on pages with the block, and only the part for that kind of file, when the block comes near the screen.

Privacy

The plugin stores no data, sets no cookies and contacts no outside service. Your files are read by the visitor’s browser straight from your site. If you link a file on another website, the visitor’s browser loads it from there.

Third-party libraries

• PDF.js 6.5.438 (npm package pdfjs-dist) by Mozilla – github.com/mozilla/pdf.js – Apache License 2.0. Bundled as build/pdfjs.js and build/pdfjs/pdf.worker.min.js (minified upstream build); license in build/pdfjs/LICENSE.txt.
  Also from the pdfjs-dist package: the JavaScript builds of the OpenJPEG (BSD-2) and JBIG2 (BSD-3) image decoders in build/pdfjs/decoders, the Foxit (BSD-3) and Liberation (GPLv2 with font exception) standard fonts in build/pdfjs/standard_fonts, and the Adobe CMaps (BSD-3) in build/pdfjs/cmaps, each with its license file. The fonts and CMaps are binary data files; the build stores each one unchanged as a base64 string in a .json file, which the plugin decodes back to the original bytes for pdf.js.

• docx-preview 0.4.1 (npm package docx-preview) by Volodymyr Baydalka – github.com/VolodymyrBaydalka/docxjs – Apache License 2.0. Bundled in build/docx-preview.js; license in build/docx-preview-LICENSE.txt.

• JSZip 3.10.2 (npm package jszip) by Stuart Knightley – github.com/Stuk/jszip – MIT License or GPLv3 (used here under the MIT License). Bundled in build/docx-preview.js, it opens the DOCX file (a zip archive); license in build/jszip-LICENSE.txt.

• SheetJS Community Edition 0.20.3 (package xlsx) by SheetJS LLC – sheetjs.com / git.sheetjs.com/sheetjs/sheetjs – Apache License 2.0. Bundled in build/xlsx.js; license in build/xlsx-LICENSE.txt. Installed from the official SheetJS tarball (cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-0.20.3/xlsx-0.20.3.tgz, as SheetJS recommends), not from the older npm release.

The unminified source of this plugin is in the src folder, with package.json and webpack.config.js. Build it with npm install and npm run build; the build copies the pdf.js files from node_modules/pdfjs-dist.