# Alternative methods to display PDFs **URL:** \ **Category:** Ignition\ **Tags:** ignition80\ **Created:** [January 21, 2020, 8:32pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/alternative-methods-to-display-pdfs/31491 "2020-01-21T20:32:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![brendan.curran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cdc98d/32.png) [@brendan.curran](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/brendan.curran)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 8:32pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/alternative-methods-to-display-pdfs/31491/1 "2020-01-21T20:32:03Z")
Are there any alternative methods to display PDFs other than the PDF viewer? I’m trying to get PDFs to display on a larger screen but the PDF viewer compresses the PDFs so much that the text is pretty much unreadable and the images are often too blurry to understand what is going on in them. I’ve tried everything I can think of for the PDF viewer and I’m ready to just give up on the component. Anyone have any experience using custom functions to display PDFs? ---
**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2020, 9:10pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/alternative-methods-to-display-pdfs/31491/2 "2020-01-21T21:10:31Z")
An easy option is to use the web browser module. You’ll need a webserver of some kind to ‘serve’ the actual PDF contents - you can use Ignition, via the Webdev module, or some external fileserver hooked up to your DB. ---
**Author:** ![zxcslo](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/zxcslo/32/61610_2.png) [@zxcslo](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/zxcslo)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 9:45am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/alternative-methods-to-display-pdfs/31491/3 "2020-03-10T09:45:42Z")
When will the PDF Viewer be updated to v6.3.x in Ignition v7.9? It seems that they ‘fixed’ the blurry images… [http://www.icesoft.org/wiki/display/PDF/ICEpdf+6.3.0+Release+Notes](http://www.icesoft.org/wiki/display/PDF/ICEpdf+6.3.0+Release+Notes) ---
**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2020, 6:12pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/alternative-methods-to-display-pdfs/31491/4 "2020-03-12T18:12:33Z")
We can’t update to 6.3 in 7.9, because it requires Java 8. Ignition 7.9 (contractually) has to support Java 6, 7, and 8. ---
**Author:** ![zxcslo](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/zxcslo/32/61610_2.png) [@zxcslo](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/zxcslo)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2020, 9:17am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/alternative-methods-to-display-pdfs/31491/5 "2020-03-13T09:17:30Z")
OK, I tried in Ignition 8.0.9. On the left is the PDF (Siemens manual) open in the Ignition in the PDF Viewer. On the right is the same PDF open in Adobe Viewer… ![PDF_viever_in_8_0_9](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/2X/8/8879b9f32001a04ed25f685538f09b4d6d8d30a3.png) The picture in the Ignition PDF Viewer is … unrecognizable… And all the pictures in the PDF are the same… you can’t see, what the picture represents… And this is the original Siemens Manual PDF from Siemens Customer Support site. [68011496\_S7-1200\_1500\_Webserver\_DOC\_v3\_en.pdf](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/2X/c/cb93e68e36c5268ac60930c99fde293b3813947a.pdf) (1.7 MB) ---
**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2020, 3:22pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/alternative-methods-to-display-pdfs/31491/6 "2020-03-13T15:22:34Z")
We can’t update the viewer in 7.9. We also _haven’t_ updated it in 8.0. So I would expect the behavior to be exactly the same. At some point soon we’re going to go to 6.3.2 in 8.0.X. We’ll update this thread when that happens.