Small and mighty
Triiiceratops is currently both the smallest and most capable embeddable IIIF viewer.
Coverage against size
To put an objective (if imperfect) measurement on the capability of the following IIIF viewers, we count the number of recipes each viewer is recorded as supporting in the IIIF Cookbook Viewer Matrix. At the time of measurement, there were 68 recipes on that matrix.
Supported recipes more is better
- works
- partial, as the matrix marks it
- does not
- of 68 recipes
Bundle size less is better
The bundle size of each viewer, gzipped, for an audio/visual session. That distinction is important because Universal Viewer, for example, uses code splitting to dynamically load support for audiovisual content. This can make it appear smaller than Mirador, but Mirador is a single bundle. The figures above are the real gzipped sizes delivered over the wire for an audiovisual session.
Every viewer measured
| Viewer | Version | Recipes, of 68 | Image session | Audiovisual session | Bytes per recipe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Triiiceratops | 1.0.0 | 55 | 114,878 | — | 2,089 |
| Triiiceratops + plugin-av | 1.0.0 + 1.0.1 | 55 | 130,790 | 130,790 | 2,378 |
| TIFY | 0.35.0 | 31 (3 partial) | 141,467 | 141,467 | 4,563 |
| Canvas Panel | 1.0.74 | — | 180,757 | 180,757 | — |
| Universal Viewer | 4.4.2 | 25 | 502,284 | 800,413 | 32,017 |
| Clover IIIF | 3.12.0 | 18 (1 partial) | 623,761 | 623,761 | 34,653 |
| Mirador | 4.1.0 | 31 (3 partial) | 713,937 | 713,937 | 23,030 |
| Glycerine Viewer | 2.1.0 | 31 | 756,475 | 756,475 | 24,402 |
Method
Measured 12 September 2026. Each viewer's own documented embed was served locally and driven in a real browser against the IIIF Cookbook manifests 0001-mvm-image and 0003-mvm-video, and every request the page made was recorded. A session is the files that session actually fetched, so a viewer that code-splits is compared on what it loads rather than on what it publishes.
Compression is identical for every row: raw bytes, gzip level 9, Brotli quality 11, applied locally, with a multi-file total the sum of those files compressed separately, which is what separate HTTP responses cost. Triiiceratops is built from this repository's own sources and every other row is that project's published artifact at the version in the table, not re-minified. Excluded everywhere: source maps, host HTML, manifests, images, tiles, media, fonts and external configuration.