After iOS8 upgrade, safari can't display PDF in iframes again

In my application, I generated the PDFs that I was trying to display in an iframe from HTML that I also generated. It was a print preview screen for printing documents from an Ipad. We had to update our iframes to instead show this generated HTML for the preview and then use the PDF for actually printing the document. Using this approach also allowed us to be able to scroll through the document with one finger on the Ipad. This only works if you have the HTML which is used to create the PDF document though, which may not be the case for everyone.

TLDR;

If you generate PDFs from HTML code, you can instead write the HTML into the iframe's #document to show it to the user in iOS8

Below is a link to a blog post showing how this is done:

http://www.zomeoff.com/javascript-how-to-load-dynamic-contents-html-string-json- to-iframe/

I found this same issue reported on Stack Overflow, and it offered a solution to resize the iFrame after the PDF is loaded, since iOS 8 apparently renders the PDF file as an image. See here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15480804/problems-displaying-pdf-in-iframe-on -mobile-safari

I had this issue. In my case I was using a data url...

The solution was to set the src of the iframe to a blob url created with URL.createObjectURL

Note that this issue only reproduces in the Modern WebKit API (WKWebView) which is now used by Safari. Offline web apps (after saved to the Home screen) and WebSheet (the app used for captive Wi-Fi networks) still use UIWebView, so they are not affected by this bug.

Other web browsers which still use UIWebView continue render the full PDF in an iframe as expected.

I also confirmed this bug, too.

http://www.broadband-xp.com/test/ios/iframe.html

is the sample page I created.

Safari in iOS 8.0 can display only the first page of the PDF if it is shown as iframe contents.

There is a similar (worse) bug in the case of embed tags or object tags.

Safari in iOS 8.0 can not display a PDF embedded in a HTML page(with embed tag).

brianfromhaderslev wrote:

It shows the first page of the loaded PDF file in the iframe, but where is the rest of the PDF file? (and yes, I need the iframe, since I need space to the right of it)

I NEED A QUICK FIX, my customers can't use my website 😟

Any of you have a suggestion?

A frustrated developer

You may be able to manually adjust the height of the iframe (via CSS) to show all the pages of the PDF. I have not tried this myself, though.

hokie_coder wrote:

I've tried that on my app when I ran into this issue. The contents of the missing pages are still missing and increasing the iframe height just shows you more blank white space.

Yes, I just noticed that after testing. 😟 The only other possibility that I can think of to work around this is to break the PDF into individual files for each page, then you could use either <iframe> or <img> tags to render each page individually.

Today I noticed one thing even though it was obvious from the beginning.

In iOS 8.0's Safari, when I touch and hold the PDF, the callout comes up.

It is the callout for saving images.

The PDF in the iframe is recognized as a mere image.

>Is there an actual bug report filed somewhere that I can refer my customers to when they complain about this or is this discussion as close to that as I can >get?

I reported this bug several months ago to Apple and found this bug had already been reported by someone else.

The bug report in Apple's site is not in public. Only the reporter and Apple staffs can view it.

This is really frustrating.

This workaround works only in the case of a one-page PDF. Even if the PDF has two or more pages, only the first page of the PDF is rendered.

Any news on this? Is there an actual bug report filed somewhere that I can refer my customers to when they complain about this or is this discussion as close to that as I can get? I assume Apple does not have an open issue tracker where one can see progress on known bugs?

See also: iOS 8 Safari No Longer Supports PDF w/Password?

I've tried that on my app when I ran into this issue. The contents of the missing pages are still missing and increasing the iframe height just shows you more blank white space.

Did you find solution for "safari can't display PDF in iframes again" issue?