Mozilla programmers have achieved a goal to build a PDF reader out of Web programming technology, the "pixel-perfect" rendering of a particular file.

The file, a research paper on fast execution of JavaScript (PDF), contains formatted text, graphics, tables, and graphical diagrams. With the high-quality rendering, programmers Andreas Gal and Chris Jones declared the pdf.js mature enough to warrant the 0.2 version number yesterday.

The pdf.js project, introduced to the world in June, uses JavaScript and HTML5's Canvas For to process and display the file. Version 0.2 adds a better user interface, support for TrueType fonts, improved graphics abilities, and more. For a look at how the Web-based tool performs, you can read the JavaScript paper with pdf.js online, too. It works with Firefox in my tests, but other browsers aren't supported--yet.

"We intend pdf.js to work in all HTML5-compliant browsers. And that, by definition, means pdf.js should work equally well on all operating systems that those browsers run on," but right now it requires a nightly build of Firefox, the programmers said. "The [PDF research] paper is rendered less well on other platforms and in older Firefoxen, and even worse in other browsers. But such is life on the bleeding edge of the Web platform."

The Mozilla plan is to include the software within Firefox itself. "We would love to see it embedded in other browsers or Web applications; because it's written only in standards-compliant web technologies, the code will run in any compliant browser," the programmers added.

PDF files are widespread on the Net and visible in Google search results, among other places. But they can be slow to load and in the past relied on an Adobe browser plug-in that behaved very differently from the browser itself. The pdf.js project holds the potential of helping to make PDF a more ordinary document type for browsers.

Next up is a performance improvements in the form of support for Web Workers, which enable background JavaScript processing tasks. That should improve rendering speed and reduce user-interface delays.

Also on the list is a more ambitious test document, the official PDF 1.7 specification (PDF), a sprawling 1,310-page, 31MB file.

A big missing feature, though, is the ability to copy text. That relies on a later phase of work that could use the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) standard.

Google's Chrome has a built-in PDF reader within the browser itself, but it's not perfect. It's aware of its shortcomings, though: when it tries to download the PDF reference document, it warns it can't show it all suggests opening it in Adobe Reader.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

The biggest challenge to making Google+ a viable competitor to Facebook is that people must reproduce their social graph--their collection of connections--at the new service. But a Chrome extension makes that process a lot easier by automating the extraction of contact information that your Facebook contacts have shared.

The extension, from open-source programmer Mohamed Mansour, is called Facebook Friend Exporter. It's not a simple one-click process, but it's close.

The tool, though, likely won't sit well at the dominant social-networking site. Section 3.2 of Facebook's terms of service states, "You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission."

The arrival of Google+ has brought new concrete reality to the previously somewhat academic spat in 2010 between Facebook and Google about who owns information about your social-network connections.

Google, which often has championed openness, believes you should be able to extract information about your contacts from the online services you use, and with Google Takeout, you can. Facebook, which sees no particular reason why it should give a powerful rival the keys to its kingdom, disagrees.

Mansour, who by the way also wrote a Chrome extension that lets you cross-post Google+ messages to Twitter and Facebook, said he agrees with Google.

"I am scraping my own data that my Facebook friends allowed me to use and view," Mansour said in a Google+ conversation about the extension. "Facebook doesn't own my friends. I want my friends to be in a place that is easily accessible, extractable, and shareable. And if that results a ban/expulsion/termination, so be it."

He offers this note of caution, though: "Use at your own risks! From the 30K+ users who used it, no one got a ban notice from Facebook, but I don't guarantee that."

Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mansour's extension jumps straight into the fracas by copying the information your contacts have shared with you already on Facebook--name, e-mail address, phone number, birthday, Web site, address--then letting you save it as a spreadsheet file or import it directly into your Gmail address book.

And of course your Gmail address book is the foundation for your social ties on Google+. The service lets you sift through your Google contacts and add them to "circles" such as "friends" or "following," making it easy to send a message to a specific group.

Even though the Chrome extension lets you extract the Facebook contact information, it still can be a lot of work to sort it properly in Google+. If you have 20 friends on Facebook, it's not too big a deal. I have 437, and it's a pain.

The extension doesn't solve the biggest problem with Google+, though: getting people to actually use it. Even when an easy sign-up replaces Google+ beta's hobbled invitation process, you'll still have to convince your Facebook pals to tune into another conversation channel. And people might not necessarily list Gmail addresses at Facebook, making it harder to get in touch over Google+, which of course requires a Google account.

You'll be missing history, too: the photos you've seen and the scads of earlier conversations you've had won't be on Google+ unless people put them there.

But that's going to be a problem with any new Facebook challenger. With more than 15,000 downloads, Mansour's extension apparently already has helped many clear the basic address-book hurdle.

Originally posted at Deep Tech