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 Wanderer Moon (my wife’s blog) into a PDF, the link I’ll include is:
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.
<a title="Download as PDF"
href="https://pdfmyurl.com?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
Download this post as PDF
</a>
All in all, an useful tool, though it may fail to correctly render sites with complicated CSS layouts and justified text.
[via TechnoSpot]
