Loading ...Save web pages as PDF with Firefox 3
It’s not clear at this point whether Firefox 3 will include an option to save web pages as PDF files. It is in the PRD (product requirement document) but it could get cut for time constraint reasons.
Fortunately, the backend necessary to make this happen is already in place and Firefox 3 will be able to save pages as PDF. It’s just that the necessary user interface may not be there.
Stuart Parmenter, the Firefox developer who made it possible has released printpdf, an extension that adds a Print to PDF… option to the Tools menu.
Select it, set a name and location for the PDF to be saved and Firefox will print the current web page as a PDF file.
It’s not perfect though. I made a couple of tests and found that the generated PDFs are noticeably larger (3x - 4x) than those produced with PDFCreator, an open source PDF printing utility for Windows and long time favorite. Printing isn’t perfect either as some images where left out in one of my tests.
But this is a first version and it seems that at least it will be available as an extension if the necessary UI doesn’t make it to Firefox 3 final.
Get printpdf from Mozilla’s Bugzilla. Remember you will need a recent Firefox 3 nightly to try it as well.
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October 18th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
great news for windows users, but ubuntu 7.10 has it for any application !
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October 31st, 2007 at 5:29 am
Having the option to print on the menu (rather than changing printers to PDFCreator) is handy, but for me, it would be far more useful to be able to create and email that PDF in a single menu action - that cuts out quite a few more mouse clicks.
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BergerApril 23rd, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I agree with Ian. A save as pdf button would be great!! For every email marketing layout or landing page that I create, the only way it gets to my clients and/or proofed by our team is via PDF.
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March 3rd, 2008 at 5:51 am
Seems like a needed feature. What’s with the extension putting the menu item in the Tools menu? What was wrong with the File menu, where File operations are usually selected?
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April 25th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Is it need to have Adobe reader in the local workstation to save
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May 29th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Great Idea. But what is most needed is the possibility to print/save a web page exactly as seen on screen. Many websites these days have very silly stylesheets and many other useless ideas that garble print output. Those are useless for refrerence purposes.
So best would be to have the choice between: save-to-pdf-exactly-as-seen-on-screen and simulate-print-and-save-to-pdf-whatever-garbage-comes-out.
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Haudy KazemiJune 18th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
“Great Idea. But what is most needed is the possibility to print/save a web page exactly as seen on screen. Many websites these days have very silly stylesheets and many other useless ideas that garble print output. Those are useless for refrerence purposes.”
An extension called Screengrab will let you save a screenshot of a whole webpage, even if part of it is off the bottom of the screen. Essentially Screengrab will scroll the page up and down to capture the whole thing, and then save it to a PNG file. While this is not as ideal because it is not a searchable, editable document, it could be used to meet the need you identified.
Screengrab: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146
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June 22nd, 2008 at 3:40 am
This extension doesn’t produce exact copies of the web page as a PDF, what’s more it can take ages and the file sizes are huge. What’s required is the Internet Explorer ability to save as an MHT file complete, which used to be available to Firefox as a MAF file.
MAF is incompatible for FF after 1.5, but if a similar extension worked for FF3 it would solve a lot of problems. There is a “tweaked” version of MAF that’s supposed to work up to FF3, but opening saved files just gives blank pages. MAF couldn’t save the weird and wonderful web pages cooked up with CSS and other methods, anyway. So good riddance to MAF, and long live its replacement, whatever it is.
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I'm not KateAugust 8th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Kate, there exists unMht, an extension for FF3 which manages MHT files quite well.
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