[html] How to embed a PDF viewer in a page?

If I'm not mistaken, Google Docs offers the means to display a PDF that is stored on the same server as the web page via an <iframe>, but I need to know how I can do this in a cross-browser compliant way.

I would really opt for FlowPaper, especially their new Elements mode that can be found here : https://flowpaper.com/demo/

It flattens the PDFs significantly at the same time as keeping text sharp which means that it will load much faster on mobile devices

have a try with Flex Paper http://flexpaper.devaldi.com/

it works like scribd

using bootstrap you can have a responsive and mobile first embeded file.

<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9">
  <iframe class="embed-responsive-item" src="address of your file" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>

Aspect ratios can be customized with modifier classes.
<!-- 21:9 aspect ratio -->
<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-21by9">
  <iframe class="embed-responsive-item" src="..."></iframe>
</div>

<!-- 16:9 aspect ratio -->
<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9">
  <iframe class="embed-responsive-item" src="..."></iframe>
</div>

<!-- 4:3 aspect ratio -->
<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-4by3">
  <iframe class="embed-responsive-item" src="..."></iframe>
</div>

<!-- 1:1 aspect ratio -->
<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-1by1">
  <iframe class="embed-responsive-item" src="..."></iframe>
</div>

This might work a little better this way

<embed src= "MyHome.pdf" width= "500" height= "375">

PDF.js is an HTML5 technology experiment that explores building a faithful and efficient Portable Document Format (PDF) renderer without native code assistance. It is community-driven and supported by Mozilla Labs.

You can see the demo here.

pdf2htmlEX by coolwanglu is probably the best solution out there to convert a pdf file into html. You could do a simple convert and then embed the html page as an iframe or something similar.

Be sure to test any solution across different Reader preferences. A site visitor may have their browser set to open the PDF in Reader/Acrobat as opposed to the browser, e.g., by disabling the Acrobat plugin in Firefox..

I can't be sure of my results, because I have two different Acrobat plugins that Firefox recognizes due to my having different versions of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader, but it does appear that you at least need to test what happens if a website visitor has their browser set to not open the PDF in the browser. It could be quite annoying when they look at what appears to be an otherwise usable web page and their browser is nagging them to open a PDF file that they think they didn't request. In some cases, the PDF file spontaneously opened in Adobe Reader, not the browser, and in other cases the browser threw up a dialog saying the file didn't exist.

I ran into such mismatches with iframe and object both, different issues for different code.

This is for simple HTML code. I haven't tried the suggested frameworks.

If I'm not mistaken, the OP was asking (although later accepted a .js solution) whether Google's embedded PDF display server will display a PDF on his own website.

So, one and a half years later: yes, it will.

See http://googlesystem.blogspot.ca/2009/09/embeddable-google-document-viewer.html. Also, see https://docs.google.com/viewer, and plug in the URL of the file you want to display.

Edit: Re-reading, OP was asking for solutions that don't use iFrames. I don't think that's possible with Google's viewer.