This works and displays correctly, but is unbearably slow on iPad 2 whereas the PDF loads instantly. What is the point then or does it work a lot better in desktop browsers?
The OSX Quartz graphic layer (also used in iOS) uses PDF internally as graphic object model.
It is no surprise iOS handles rendering PDF's so quickly and so well and without the need for an third party app, it always has from the release of the first iPhone. This is also why print to PDF is built in on OSX.
I heard that with careful optimization on the server side and a clever JS may solve this. So far the default UI just demostrates the ability of reading-while-downloading.
The idea is that now the document becomes more controllable and accessible, say you can put Google Analytics in your resume written in LaTeX; or maybe an social reading service, where you can comment, annotate and share.
Unlike PDF viewers, web browers are never optimized for this kind of messy inputs. The next version of pdf2htmlEX will be focused on optimizations, e.g. smaller size of background images, hopefully that would help.
Usually I don't use social services, at least not "socially" (e.g. twitter as public text messaging). IMHO whether the service is crap or not, depends on what kind of stuff that it encourages you to do, either finding useful information, or playing boring games and pay for higher rankings.
Still like old Google Reader with its OLD social features.
It is no surprise iOS handles rendering PDF's so quickly and so well and without the need for an third party app, it always has from the release of the first iPhone. This is also why print to PDF is built in on OSX.