How to display most used file extensions (pdf, doc, docx, xls, ...) into a browser using PHP?

Question

Currently developping a mobile webmail for my school, I am encountering the iPhone problem : iPhone users are enable to download files, so I would like to allow them, at least, to consult their files with the common extensions : doc, docx, xls, xlsx, pdf, ppt, pptx, XML, open office files, an so on.

Does something exist to do that using PHP or HTML/Javascript ?

Answer 1

You could use google doc's viewer: http://docs.google.com/viewer

This will allow you to display all of these formats directly in the browser.

Basically you just have to do this to display a document:

<iframe src="http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=<?=urlencode($document_url)?>&embedded=true" width="600" height="780" style="border: none;"></iframe>

(Note that google docs must have access to these documents, which may or may not make this solution unsuitable.)