C# PDF Viewers

Photo by Thomas Lefebvre

Originally Posted On: https://ironpdf.com/docs/questions/net-pdf-viewer/

Viewing PDFs in our applications is a common request that is easily solved.

We are working on a visual framework for viewing PDFs in C#/.Net – in the mean time you have lots of viable free options without resorting to Adobe Acrobat.

For web applications – PDFs can be viewed in a browser window or iframe. You may also use the amazing pdf.js library from mozilla to leverage a full PDF viewer written in pure javascript code.

https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/

For viewing PDF documents directly in WPF you can use the native WebBrowser control.

For viewing PDF documents directly in windows forms (WinForms) applications the WebBrowser control is also a good choice.

To open a PDF from any application in an external window, we may use a trick involving System.Diagnostics.Process.Start.

This will generally open the PDF in the default web browser which supports viewing PDF content, or Adobe Acrobat if installed.

1. // Render any HTML fragment or document to HTML
2. var Renderer = new IronPdf.HtmlToPdf();
3. var PDF = Renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdf(“<h1>Hello IronPdf</h1>”);
4. var OutputPath = “HtmlToPDF.pdf”;
5. PDF.SaveAs(OutputPath);
7. // This neat trick opens our PDF file so we can see the result in our default PDF viewer
8. System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(OutputPath);

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