We are trying to figure out the best way to dynamically serve web-viewable renditions of Word documents in the browser. Because we must guard access to the location of the files as our product is a document management system that stores the documents and renditions in the filesystem, the Word to Html path is proving to be problematic. We love the way the Html rendition looks and the fact that it doesn’t require a plugin or other control, but even if we create a serving page to abstract the location of the files, any images will show a full path in the src and would be a potential security risk.
We can convert to PDF, but then the browser will load the pdf plugin registered on the client which loads various menus and other controls that take away from the look of the UI for this particular page. The user has a requirement to show a preview of a document in a frame on one of the pages and doesn’t like the look of the plugin.
Perhaps there is some way to force the plugin to load in “lightweight mode” via properties of the PDF if such a thing exists? Any other suggestions to loading a web rendition of a doc without introducing an ugly and space-eating plugin UI?
Thanks,
Dave