If I remember correctly, it was only possible to add text into pre-existing text fields. With this feature, you can add text (or also scribbles) anywhere you'd like.
I'm so incredibly hyped for this feature because it means I no longer need to pirate Acrobat! I love reading books on PDF. I once read a non-fiction book and essentially made it into a picture book but with Wikipedia articles and pictures of the artifacts, of places and people. I even added side notes to help with the historical and social context. But it was a painful experience and tired me out after the first and only one.
This means I can simply ctrl+v anything I need into it, both text and images. This is so great, you guise, my heart is filled with joy. Whoever decided this was going to be a great addition to Firefox was completely right. Thanks for thinking of the user! What a great implementation, too.
So Firefox was updated on my system a few days ago and it popped open a web page telling me I can now edit PDFs in Firefox. I thought, great. So I click the "try now" link or whatever it said. It opens up a PDF file in a tab, and... I can not edit the fields. Nice job. Really sold it to me...
But why? There's no need for a PDF editor in a browser. This is just raising the size and lowering the performance of a browser for a feature that almost no one needs or wants.
Mozilla should probably build a PDF viewer/editor (Adobe sucks and Foxit has gone downhill in recent years), but it's not part of Firefox.
I actually like this a lot. Why not make computer things easy for people using them? In environments where people send forms as non-editable .pdf files, this is great!
Editable PDF's are commonly used around the world, for statistics, beurocracy and application processes. Having a program readily available to edit those is generally a good thing.
It also prevents Adobe from getting downloads, which is an absolute win.
I read this and immediately celebrated it as the greatest feature to grace firefox in a while. It's already my default pdf viewer since it means I don't have to start up any program to view a pdf, now I also don't need to do that to edit one.
As someone who reads PDFs almost exclusively, you have no idea how handy this tool is for those of us who do use it. Firefox really is leading in this regard for its users and us happy few are so happy right now.
I agree, this is juat bloat. Super useful .to have the utility but in a browser ffs ? Just have an app people can download that you can do it with, I'd for sure use it. They don't even have native grouped tabs yet, something that a browser should do so start focusing in browser improvement.