Our new PDF Download 2.0 extension for Firefox 2 & 3 and Flock 1 has been in a private beta for a little while now, but this week we’re opening the program up to everyone.
If you’re not familiar with PDF Download 1.0, it was designed to help you handle the PDF files you encounter when surfing the web. It can prompt you to do things like automatically download the PDF file (instead of opening it) or automatically convert it to HTML for easy viewing (visit the PDF Download site for full details). PDF Download 2.0 gives you a lot more.
PDF Download 2.0 lets you convert any web page to PDF — free. Why would you want to do this? Perhaps you want to share the entire contents of a webpage (including images, active links, fonts, etc.), or make an offline archive of the page, produce a high-quality version for printing, or email a copy to a friend. There’s a variety of situations in which it would be handy. (Of note, Web-to-PDF functionality was in the preliminary list of requirements for Firefox 3, but didn’t make the final cut.)
After installing the PDF Download add-on to your Firefox or Flock browser, a toolbar button is added (see screenshot above) at the top-right corner, from which you can do your web-to-PDF conversions. As the options show, you can convert and then save the file locally, or you can convert and then receive and email with the PDF attached. If you go into the option settings, you can configure a default email address and default action for the PDF Download button, which can make the PDF conversion a one step process.
What we’re really pleased with is the quality of the PDFs we’re making via the online service. PDF Download not only converts the page quickly, it does a fine job of retaining the page layout (including elegant handling of CSS-based pages), converting images, and retaining all active hyperlinks on the page.
We’re really keen for you to try PDF Download on your favorite sites and let us know how you go. We want a lot of people trying the new service before we release the update to all existing 1x users. Please sign up for the beta program!
Also, please keep in mind that not all functionality is in place yet and we’ll be cleaning up the user experience further over the next couple of weeks.
Recent PDF Download coverage on the interwebs
- Specify PDF Behavior on a Per-Case Basis with PDF Download (Lifehacker)
- PDF Download 2.0 Beta Adds Advanced Web-to-PDF Conversion (Lifehacker)
- PDF Download Gets Even Better (Web Worker Daily)
- 3 More Ways to Improve Firefox (Web Worker Daily)
- PDF Download Firefox Extension Review (About.com)
- Faster PDF in Firefox (Cnet)
More information
- Sign up for the beta
- PDF Download web site
8 Comments
I have a question about the PDF Download 2.0 Beta. Is all processing local or is the information relayed to an online processor for the conversion?
This is a critical question, since obviously if I’m trying to save web pages with confidential information on them as PDFs (or convert PDFs to HTML), external processing is not acceptable.
Thank you.
Is it possible to pdf the highlighted portions of a webpage and not the whole page?
There are times when the whole page is/would be overkill.
—
sfbg
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for your comment.
The conversion is performed on our conversion server. The extension passes the URL and conversion options (page orientation, e-mail to send PDF to) to our server, which then converts that URL to PDF and sends it back to the client.
Therefore, at the moment any pages that are behind an authenticated session are not going to be converted to PDF. We will be looking at building this functionality into PDF Download at some point in the future.
The benefit of this architecture is that the extension remains small in size, and any improvements to the conversion is automatically available to *all* versions of the extension.
sfbg,
Not at the moment. Only the full page can be converted right now.
You could suggest this feature here if you like -> http://customerconnect.nitropdf.com/pages/pdf_download
Thank you for the answer. However, given that I handle sensitive information and frequently need to make PDFs of that data for distribution, any processing which sends that data over the net is simply unacceptable both to my employer and myself.
I have un-installed the converter on my copy of Firefox.
Hi Geoff,
Totally understood.
You might like to take a look at PrimoPDF if that’s the case -> http://www.primopdf.com. This is the #1 free PDF printer driver around, and all conversion is done locally.
Hi Chris,
Great software (although the authenticated session issue is also a problem for me with many of the pages I would like to print - I hope you’ll be addressing this in future).
One problem I have with the current version is the lack of margins/borders in the pdf output. Many printers won’t print to the very edge of a page (or not without a lot of fiddling about).
Hi Alex,
We’ll be addressing the authenticated sessions issue relatively soon. We need to be very careful in the way we implement this feature though, as some users will not want to have their ‘private’ pages converted on a separate machine to what they are on. When we do implement this feature, we will keep this in mind.
You can suggest and vote for features in PDF Download here -> http://customerconnect.nitropdf.com/pages/pdf_download.
Thanks!
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[...] Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): The makers of the previously-posted PDF Download extension have released a 2.0 beta that adds some key features, including a full web-to-PDF converter that retains CSS styling, web links, and layout details. The extension has also beefed up its PDF-to-HTML rendering, and works in Firefox 2 & 3, Flock, and other Mozilla-based projects. The developers have made 10,000 beta sign-ups available, with more to come. Hit the link below for more details on what’s new in PDF Download 2.0. PDF Download Beta 2.0 [...]
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