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What to Look for in a Modern Document Viewer

Looking for an alternate viewer for IBM Content Navigator? Look no further...
In September 2013, Google’s Chromium Blog published a post titledSaying Goodbye to Our Old Friend NPAPI,” signaling the beginning of the end for NPAPI-based browser plugins (not to be confused with “apps” or “extensions”) such as Silverlight and Java. The rise of web usage on mobile device browsers—typically without support for plugins—increasingly led browser makers to restrict and remove plugin support from their products as they tried to unify the set of features available across desktop and mobile versions.

In addition, NPAPI plugins have long-exposed a plethora of security issues that otherwise would not be present in a browser. Many enterprise applications – document viewers included – faced a strict deadline to either modernize the technologies they were built on or risk being left behind.

Many organizations want and need to update, upgrade or overhaul their current document viewer. There are a few different options on the market, all of which display documents, but each one does so with different priorities and technologies.

Some viewers still depend on NPAPI plugins such as Java and Silverlight, other viewers render documents on a server and require more management and IT support, and still, other viewers use HTML5 and modern web technologies to render documents on-the-fly in the user’s browser.

This level of diversity in the viewer market is comparable to the immense diversity in the résumés of job applicants – something we can all relate to. So, we created a job description for what we think a document viewer should do and a résumé in which our Viewer responds to the application.

 

JOB DESCRIPTION

We are a dynamic company that utilizes ECM technology as part of its core business processes. We are looking for a dynamic Viewer to join our team of state-of-the-art content management tools to deliver unparalleled performance to our users. The Viewer needs to go beyond content presentation and deliver insight that drives users to make better decisions.

The Viewer will work with a broad range of content formats in a modern, browser-based interface to deliver content that users can view, annotate or modify. The Viewer will be responsible for rendering content in the most efficient way possible to streamline the operations of each business process. It will need to seamlessly fit into the content management system so we can easily install it and take advantage of the underlying system functionality.

The candidate should be able to handle large documents of over 1,000 pages while simultaneously offering a high level of interactivity that allows users to easily scroll through and find content. Being able to identify and navigate to key information is a definite plus.

The job will be centered in the back office but the Viewer will need to perform on the road or in remote locations periodically. It must perform equally well in all locations.

 

The Ideal Candidate

Fill out the form to view a résumé in which our document viewer responds to the application.