Mike Doherty

<h3>Basic use</h3>
<p>To embed a PDF you’ve uploaded to your WordPress site’s media<br />
library, simply put the URL for the attachment page in your<br />
post on its own line. The PDF will be embedded with the<br />
default settings at that location, as if it were using oEmbed.</p>
<h4>Examples:</h4>
<pre><code>Post short URL:

http://localhost/?p=9

Attachment default URL:

http://localhost/?attachment_id=9

Attachment pretty URL:

http://localhost/test/report1/

Media direct URL:

<p><a href="http://localhost/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/report1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow ugc">Click to access report1.pdf</a></p>
</code></pre>
<p>This doesn’t work for PDFs hosted on other websites, or if you<br />
need to change the parameters.</p>
<h3>Using the <code>[pdf]</code> shorttag</h3>
<p>If the PDF isn’t in your WordPress site’s media library, or if<br />
you want to customize any parameters for the embed, then use<br />
the <code>[pdf]...[/pdf]</code> shorttag. Between the tags, you’ll provide<br />
the URL for the PDF to embed. If the PDF is in your WordPress<br />
site’s media library, you can either give the attachment page<br />
URL, or the URL to the PDF file directly.</p>
<p>The <code>[pdf]</code> shorttag accepts several optional parameters:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>width</code> – sets the width of the frame the PDF is embedded in.<br />
By default, this is set to 100%.</li>
<li><code>height</code> – sets the height of the frame the PDF is embedded<br />
in. By default, this is unset.</li>
<li><code>title</code> – sets the title of the PDF, for use in the fallback<br />
link text.</li>
<li><code>open_params</code> – sets the <a href="https://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/acrobat/PDFOpenParameters.pdf" rel="nofollow ugc">PDF open params</a><br />
which control how the PDF file is displayed in the embed frame.<br />
These are poorly supported in browsers.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Examples:</h4>
<pre><code>Post short URL: [pdf width="200px"]http://localhost/?p=9[/pdf]
Attachment default URL: [pdf height="500em"]http://localhost/?attachment_id=9[/pdf]
Attachment pretty URL: [pdf title="Report 1"]http://localhost/test/report1/[/pdf]
Media direct URL: [pdf]http://localhost/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/report1.pdf[/pdf]
Change PDF open params: [pdf open_params="page=10&view=Fit"]http://localhost/?p=9[/pdf]
</code></pre>
<h3>Compatibility</h3>
<p>The PDF should be embedded in the page, with the document scaled so it fills the<br />
embed frame horizontally. Unfortunately, embedding PDFs is not well-supported.</p>
<h4>Auto-loading embedded PDFs</h4>
<p>Unlike with images, web browsers may not automatically download and display<br />
embedded PDFs when the page is loaded. For security reasons, some users prefer<br />
not to allow the PDF plugin to run unless they trust the website the PDF comes<br />
from. This generally leaves a grey rectangle that the user may click on to allow<br />
the PDF to be downloaded and displayed.</p>
<h4>PDF open parameters</h4>
<p>As of v0.0.8, you can set the <a href="https://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/acrobat/PDFOpenParameters.pdf" rel="nofollow ugc">PDF open parameters</a><br />
by setting <code>open_params</code> in the shortcode, as shown above. This is unlikely to actually<br />
anything, since PDF open parameters are poorly supported in browsers. But you can try!<br />
Provide the parameters as a query string: <code>page=1&view=Fit</code>. Refer to the Adobe<br />
documentation on what parameters are available.</p>
<h4>Chrome</h4>
<p>The PDF should be scaled/zoomed within the embed frame so that the full<br />
horizontal width of the paper fills the frame. This is <a href="https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=64309" rel="nofollow ugc">not<br />
supported</a> in<br />
Chrome’s default PDF viewer, so the document will probably be scaled to 100%,<br />
which may either mean the document doesn’t fill the frame, or, more likely, the<br />
document is too wide for the frame, and the right-hand side of the document is<br />
hidden.</p>
<h4>Internet Explorer</h4>
<p>Internet Explorer requires a PDF plugin to render embedded PDFs. Generally,<br />
that’s Adobe Reader. Without such a plugin, the fallback download link will be<br />
used.</p>
<h4>Mobile browsers</h4>
<p>In particular, mobile browsers may show a grey box instead of the embedded PDF,<br />
and will download the file when it is clicked. Other mobile browsers might embed<br />
the PDF, but won’t allow it to scroll.</p>
<h3>Alternatives</h3>
<p>Your best alternative is to <strong>not</strong> embed PDFs. PDFs are bad for many reasons:<br />
not easily indexed by search engines, not easily accessible by readers who use<br />
assistive technologies, poorly supported by web browsers (as seen above) and so<br />
on. They’re just <strong>bad</strong> and you should avoid embedding PDFs if you can.</p>
<p>If you <em>really</em> can’t, then you might consider using another solution like<br />
<a href="https://pdfobject.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">https://pdfobject.com/</a> or <a href="https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/pdfjs/" rel="nofollow ugc">PDF.js</a>.</p>


Vanilla PDF Embed

Embeds PDFs in your pages and posts, without using JS.

Embedly

<p>Enhance the default WordPress embedding to get previews for any article,<br />
including your own blog posts. You also get embeds for YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch,<br />
Google Maps, and Embedly’s growing list of <a href="https://embed.ly/providers" rel="nofollow ugc">1000+ supported<br />
providers</a>.</p>
<p>You can customize the style of the embeds, to optimize for darker WP themes,<br />
alignment, and width. In addition, social buttons can be added around the embeds<br />
to make it easier to share content from your blog posts.</p>
<p>If you have an Embedly Cards account, you can link it to the plugin with your Embedly API key. Not only does this remove branding from the cards, it also gives you access to analytics and viewer behaviors for most popular music and video player embeds (YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, SoundCloud). Find out how many people viewed your embeds for how long. To learn more about Embedly Cards please visit <a href="https://embed.ly/cards" rel="nofollow ugc">our website</a>.</p>
<p>Using it is as simple as the default WordPress embedding. Embed media by pasting its URL in a single line when writing a post.</p>
<p>The plugin automatically displays an embed of the media in the WordPress post editor.</p>
<p>Fair Warning: This plugin generates static HTML content for your posts.  After you deactivate<br />
the plugin, that HTML will still remain behind in all posts where the plugin was used to create<br />
embeds.</p>


The Embedly Plugin extends WordPress's auto-embed feature to give your blog more media types and style options.

Vanilla PDF Embed vs Embedly