Question

Can modernizer detect whether or not the browser has a pdf plugin installed and enabled? I’m displaying a pdf in an iframe in a web application. I remove the iframe from the dom clientside when a pdf plugin isnt present. I’m using a bit of clunky javascript to do the detection and would like to replace it with something more robust/standard and came across modernizr. Anyone know if this is possible?

Answer 1

Looking at Modernizr docs I didn’t see any way to detect for pdf plugins, but you can check the mimeTypes the browser can handle. Writting it as a Modernizr test, you could do something like:

Modernizr.addTest('pdf', function(){
    var mimes = navigator.mimeTypes;
    for (var i = 0, i_len = mimes.length; i < i_len; i++){
        if (mimes[i].type === 'application/pdf')
            return true;
    }
    return false;
});

You should then be able to detect if the browser has a pdf plugin by the value of Modernizr.pdf