I’ve been working with Google Docs Viewer to show different document types in my application. It handles most file formats really well like PDFs, Word documents, and text files. But I’m running into a problem with HTML files.
When I try to display HTML documents through the viewer, it doesn’t render them properly. Instead of showing the actual webpage content, it just displays the raw HTML source code as plain text. This is frustrating because I want to use the same viewer solution for all document types.
Has anyone found a way to make Google Docs Viewer actually render HTML files instead of treating them like text documents? I really don’t want to create separate handling logic just for HTML files when everything else works perfectly through the viewer.
Any suggestions or workarounds would be greatly appreciated!
Yeah, Google Docs Viewer just doesn’t handle HTML files well. It treats them like static documents instead of actually rendering the web content. Learned this the hard way building a doc management system a couple years back. My fix was pretty simple - check the file type on the backend first. If it’s HTML, skip Google Docs Viewer completely and throw it in a sandboxed iframe with security headers. Keeps your UI consistent but actually shows the HTML properly. The file type check barely adds any overhead and users see what they’re supposed to see.
Google Docs Viewer wasn’t built to handle HTML files - it just shows the raw code instead of rendering the page. This has been a known issue for years with no real fix. I ran into this same problem last year. My solution? Check if it’s an HTML file first, then load it in a regular iframe or webview instead of the Google Docs Viewer. Takes a bit more code, but it actually works. Trust me, trying to force HTML through the viewer just creates a mess for users.
yeah, i feel your pain! the google docs viewer just doesn’t do html right. maybe try embedding it directly in an iframe? it’s a hassle, but it works better than the viewer for this.
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