Introduction
ElasticPDF is a lightweight, standalone PDF editor built on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It can be easily integrated into any environment that supports these three technologies and runs flawlessly without any external dependencies or complex environment setup. Once integrated, it can be used to view, annotate, and edit PDF documents.
ElasticPDF was originally created to meet the needs of PDF preview, annotation, and editing in web-based projects. Today, it has helped a large number of customers worldwide build cross-platform PDF editing applications and achieve significant commercial success.
How Does It Work?
An ElasticPDF application is essentially a JavaScript-driven single-page HTML application (SPA).
Each PDF document is parsed using JavaScript and recompiled into HTML and CSS elements, enabling seamless rendering in the web environment. Except for control buttons, all page hyperlinks, page thumbnails, attachments, and other elements are automatically generated based on the PDF document itself.
During development, we leveraged the core PDF parsing capabilities of pdf.js and extended them with annotation and editing features. If you have previously used or are familiar with pdf.js, you will find the development experience with ElasticPDF very intuitive and familiar.
As the project evolved, we gradually created dedicated management entities for each PDF object, enabling a rich set of annotation tools. Features that are still under development are being continuously improved, and we are confident that ElasticPDF will soon become a world-class Web PDF editor.
Why ElasticPDF?
Zero Dependencies, Fast Deployment
ElasticPDF only requires an environment that supports JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. As long as these are available, the product runs perfectly. In other words, any environment that other products can run in, ElasticPDF can run in as well—and even environments that other products cannot support.
No Node.js or additional dependencies are required during deployment. You simply download the code package and embed it into your own product. Even developers who are new to ElasticPDF can get started within a few hours, making it highly developer-friendly.
Powerful Features
Although ElasticPDF runs entirely on frontend technologies, it delivers desktop-class capabilities for PDF preview, annotation, and editing.
It supports PDF content editing, page editing, and PDF preview, as shown below:
| No. | PDF Editing Features | PDF Annotation Features | PDF Preview Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| ① | Text content editing | Text highlighting and underlining (cross-page supported) | Load local and online PDF documents |
| ② | Add and delete pages | Insert images | Display document outline |
| ③ | Reorder pages | Freehand drawing annotations | Display document attachments and thumbnails |
| ④ | Text boxes (supports all languages) | Page navigation | |
| ⑤ | Hyperlinks (URLs, page numbers, documents) | 10%–1000% page zoom | |
| ⑥ | Arrows and straight lines | Full-text search | |
| ⑦ | Rectangles and circles | Page rotation | |
| ⑧ | Checkmarks and ID stamps | Single-page and double-page modes |
ElasticPDF also supports batch management of PDF annotations, making it ideal for document management systems:
| PDF Annotation Management Features |
|---|
| Annotation list (organized by page, with copy / delete, connector lines, and comments) |
| Edit annotations (adjust color, rotation, size, position, and opacity) |
| Eraser (erase specific parts of annotations, including text boxes) |
| Annotation history (custom undo / redo steps) |
| Annotation saving (saved in standard formats, editable in other applications) |
| Annotation export and import (JSON supported for space efficiency and multi-device sync) |
| Connector lines (link annotation list items to page content) |
| Multi-language support (currently Chinese and English, with more languages and customization coming) |
For feature details and hands-on experience, please visit the
Demo Page
Excellent Compatibility
ElasticPDF runs smoothly across all major modern browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. A special edition is even available for Internet Explorer.
The product can be rapidly deployed in virtually any frontend framework or platform, including Flutter, HTML, Vue, React, Angular, Android, and iOS applications, as well as desktop application frameworks.
Private & Offline Deployment
With licenses longer than one year, ElasticPDF supports offline private deployment. After delivering a customized offline code package, the product can run perfectly within intranet environments. Longer license terms also come with additional discounts.