Capturing webpages to PDF

[Steve A.]

It was twenty years ago that I first bought the retail version of Adobe Acrobat* and proceeded to convert all of the articles*on my Blue Guitar website into PDF format. They had been in HTML 2.0 format which required that any included image files be located in the same folder. With the PDF format all of the necessary files could be compiled into a single file.

I also used the retail version of Acrobat to convert webpages into PDF files to save their content at a particular time forever — very important*to me as unscrupulous websites could edit them to rewrite history so to speak.* On a less serious note I would save some of the humorous eBay listings like Elian's Air Guitar and Robert Johnson's Soul as well as Rip Glitter's reviews on Harmony Central, the Onion article on manic-depressive Tom Rusek and the now-famous Scandinavian collection of Amp Porn pictures***...

ebay_air_guitar.pdf

robert_johnson's_soul_on_ebay.pdf

rip_glitter.pdf

onion_manic_depressive.pdf

amp_porn.pdf

Here is a link of more files in the Blue Guitar humor folder...

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/misc/humor/

Alas, my fun and games with the retail version of Adobe Acrobat ended when I upgraded to Windows 7 which did not support the versions I had been using.

Well I finally found a really cool Android app for converting webpages into PDF files. It has its own browser which allows you to sign in to websites and will capture a scrolling image of a webpage which can be split up into pages of different sizes, like letter and legal plus quite a few more. Using my ASUS Z380M running Android 7.0.1 I can then select which pages to include to create very compact PDF files.

The app is called Web Page Capture and I have zipped two APKs, versions 1.0.6 & 1.0.8, and attached them below. Although the Play Store listing says no ads when you click one of the two action buttons, Capture Image or Save as PDF, an ad will pop up which you can just click away with the back button. After following these instructions sometimes the Android version of the hourglass will keep spinning around without stopping. When that happens try scrolling down to the bottom of the page; if you can then proceed to the next step... it should work okay.

Check to see that the created PDF is in the default folder (typically "Download.") There should also be a saved copy of the scrolling image file in the 0/Pictures/Web Page Capture folder that you can delete if you wish. Depending on how pictures on the webpage get split in two I might try saving in both Letter and Legal paper size and keep the one which works better. If you can get WPC to display the proposed pages and deselect the unneeded ones, even better. (That works on my ASUS but not my Samsung tablet.)

com.pak.logix.webpagecapture.zip

Steve A.

P.S. After using these tablets for 3+ years I finally figured out that the Samsung Tab 4 7.0 has the native ability to create PDF files from webpages under the Print tab of the 3 dot/"hamburger" menu in Chrome, at least when using the factory installed version 40.x.x

P.P.S. Nitro for Windows offers a lot of bang per buck compared to the 800 lb chicken, er, gorilla, Adobe Acrobat but it lacks many of the features I loved about their version 7.1.

*** For awhile the Amp Porn PDF file was the most downloaded file on The Blue Guitar with most users logged on from the Scandanavian countries...

[big_teee]

With linux and firefox, you just print to file.
You specify the file as a pdf file.
Here's an example.

[Steve A.]

With linux and firefox, you just print to file.
You specify the file as a pdf file.
Here's an example.

Well, the last I checked Windows (7, at least) does not have the native ability to print to PDF format and requires special drivers, none of which IMO work as well as the proprietary one from Adobe.

Web Page Capture can create a PDF file of the full webpage, not just a snippet as in the file you posted...

mef2.pdf

Steve A.

[big_teee]

I could have done more, but was just giving a quick example.
I don't ever use it anyhow. I definitely don't buy software.
I usually just post a link, or on rare occasion I post a Screenshot.
I try to keep life as simple as possible!
I had drawers full of Window add on program disks.
I threw them all in the trash.
Good riddance!
T

[Dave H]

Well, the last I checked Windows (7, at least) does not have the native ability to print to PDF format and requires special drivers, none of which IMO work as well as the proprietary one from Adobe.

I use CutePDF to print to file in Windows 7. It just looks like another printer when you select 'Print'