Introduction

The Viewer offers complete customizability. However, performing customization adds additional maintenance costs. If you choose to perform significant customization, consider how you will integrate future releases of the Viewer with your code.

You can choose to run the default Viewer with no changes outside of configuration parameters passed in to the Viewer in your web tier. This allows for the simplest integration with subsequent releases. More likely, you will want to customize the CSS, HTML, and even the unobfuscated JavaScript libraries to ensure that the Viewer meets the needs of your product.

Below are a few guidelines to help you make the right decisions in customizing your Viewer:

Viewer API (viewerControl.js)

The Viewer API is the base building block of the Viewer. We ensure that API changes are backward compatible with point releases (for example, PrizmDoc v11.1 → PrizmDoc v11.2) and will not introduce breaking changes unless critical. With major releases we also endeavor to ensure backward compatibility with previous releases of the Viewer API.

HTML Templates and CSS

The Viewer that is shipped with the product will be maintained and enhanced from release to release. The Viewer HTML and CSS markup will change with each release. Once you have begun to modify your markup, it is recommended that you consider subsequent PrizmDoc releases as sample code, in which you would evaluate product changes and choose to incorporate all or parts of those changes into your customization.

Note the following if you are updating from version 13.21 (or previous) to version 13.22 (or later): If you have customized HTML templates, build the Viewer, and use the viewerCustomizations.js output in your application, then before building the Viewer you will need to update your HTML templates to access all properties via a data object (for example, data.myProperty instead of myProperty).

Viewer Resources (viewerCustomizations.js)

The Viewer can be customized at compilation time with custom icons, translations, and the above HTML Templates, all provided at initialization time via viewerCustomizations.js.

JavaScript files (viewer.js)

The Viewer JavaScript that lies above the Viewer API is unobfuscated and open for customization. While we expect many developer needs will be satisfied through configuration parameters and minor HTML or styling changes, some developers will desire to modify viewer.js for more advanced customization. You should carefully consider your development and ongoing maintenance strategy to ensure that future releases of PrizmDoc are easy to integrate into your customizations. We cannot guarantee backward compatibility of viewer.js in future releases as it is central to the functionality of the Viewer.