If you are looking for something that performs on-the-fly conversion of web-pages into PDF format, PDFMyURL may just be the right tool for you.
The service allows for single-click conversion of pages into their PDF counterparts in the following manner:
- By visiting their site and entering the URL of the page you wish to convert.
- By using a JavaScript based Bookmarklet – that you can drag and drop onto your bookmarks / favourites toolbar and click to convert any active web-page
They also provide a mechanism by which you can embed “download as PDF” style links in your own website. The mechanism is rather simple and involves invoking their service with the target web-page as a parameter. For example, if I want to convert the front page of MindChimes (my wife’s blog) into a PDF, the link I’ll include is:
http://pdfmyurl.com?url=mindchimes.net
PDFMyURL has an exhaustive list of options that can be used to set exact page dimensions, margins, orientation, dpi, quality etc. or add custom cover pages & table of contents or even disable JavaScript in the target web-page. The options can be passed along with the url parameter while polling the service.
Extending the functionality
This can be a handy way of providing PDF downloads of individual posts of a blog and can help you avoid installation of any plugins. In case of WordPress based blogs, just include the following line of code in an appropriate location inside your loop.
Download this post as PDF
All in all, an useful tool, though it may fail to correctly render sites with complicated CSS layouts and justified text.
[via TechnoSpot]
