PDF zoom

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In regards to PDF previews, the possible zoom levels are quite restrictive when compared to the sorts of PDF's students would often end up uploading, that is to say, usually the DPI of a PDF is such that at 100% zoom, the PDF is gigantic and near impossible to acutally read or annotate through Canvas, especially since you can't actually zoom out very far on Canvas when comapred to PDF readers availble elsewhere.

The most sensible (and easiest) fix would be to allow zooming out significantly past what is currently availble.

This would be usefull for both students and teachers and reduce a lot of hassle.

12 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Moderating

@LLoubris 

Thanks for sharing this idea, which we believe references how PDFs display in the DocViewer panel of SpeedGrader. My testing in Chrome shows that the zoom settings in the browser itself allow for additional zooming in or out over and beyond what is provided in the DocViewer tools. Would you please see if that resolves the issue?

LLoubris
Community Member
Author

Sorry if I wasn't specific enough about the location, it is the docviewer for PDF submitted as part of assessments (speed grader sounds about right), however I don't believe that is an adequate solution otherwise I wouldn't have made this post, and I don't understand why the docviewer caps zooming out where it does to begin with, when almost no other pdf viewer I have used does.

Thank you for the reply.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@LLoubris 

Thanks for confirming that the prompt is specifically about the zoom settings in DocViewer. We'll move this forward for additional discussion, and remind our users that changing the zoom setting in the browser itself is a possible interim (and quick) solution.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
Chokichi
Community Member

I’m not sure why there are limits. Just let me zoom out or in on documents as far as I want and maybe add a reset zoom button. 

James
Community Champion

@Chokichi 

I feel your pain. Between students writing too small or some conversion issue with the PDF, allowing four zooms isn't always enough. I've had to download the submissions and open them with Acrobat so that I could read them and that's on a 32 inch monitor.

Chokichi
Community Member

@Stef_retired This is why using the browser zoom isn't an acceptable solution. The browser zoom makes everything bigger. This is my entire 27" monitor screen. Of course I'm exaggerating the zoom here to make a point, but it seems like a pointless restriction. As @James pointed out, the inconsistency of student's uploads makes a limited number of zoom levels a real hassle. I think another solution would be to handle PDF uploads better by reformatting them to have consistent DPI and dimensions. This could cause a whole host of other problems too, but if implemented correctly would be even better than more zoom levels.

zooming the browser zooms everything.png

jlynch045
Community Member

I have this same problem in 2022. How has this not been addressed?

mhartman
Community Explorer

Amen.  It's so hard to grade when the PDF is huge and there's no way to zoom out.

mhartman
Community Explorer

Screen Shot 2022-09-14 at 7.04.55 PM.png

Note that the Zoom Out (–) is greyed out.  No idea why, but as you can see it will be difficult to grade this submission as a result.

GretchenFB
Community Member

A few professors at our university have experienced this issue. It's a hassle to zoom out with the browser or download the document. I hope this issue is addressed.

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
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