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PDFs work this sort of miracle because they scale everything larger or smaller in just the right way.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Turn Web pages into PDFs to save them intact


July 3, 2002


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard

   In my Sunday column last week, I wrote about a new program that lets Windows users create their own PDF documents. I explained some of the benefits, and I pointed out that Apple OS X users already have PDF-creation software built into their computers. (You'll see a link to that article on the main page of my Web site for the next few weeks. Go to www.twcny.rr.com/technofile.)
   PDFs (the name means "Portable Document Format") are documents that look pretty much the same no matter how they are viewed. In other words, a PDF will look the same (or as close as technologically possible to "the same") whether you view it on a small computer monitor or on a printed page.
   PDFs work this sort of miracle because they scale everything larger or smaller in just the right way. A few years ago, this was a liability, mostly because that kind of on-the-fly scaling takes a lot of computer power. But these days most computers, whether Windows PCs, Apple computers or Linux PCs, have enough processor power to do all the scaling PDFs require without much of an effect.
   Windows PCs and both of Apple's operating systems, Mac OS and OS X, have an outstanding (and free) program that displays PDFs. It's Adobe's Acrobat Reader, available from this Web site: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Linux usually comes with a free PDF viewer; OS X, which uses PDF as its internal display method, can display PDFs with its built-in "Preview" program and can even create them with the same software.
   Being able to show PDFs quickly is a clear benefit. But what's important about this is not obvious at all. Now that PDFs can be considered universal, all of us who wish we had a good way to save entire Web pages can rejoice. Let me explain.
   You probably already know that printing a Web page and saving it are two different things. When you print it, you get everything. (Or you're SUPPOSED to get everything. Sometimes the frames that many Web sites use get in the way. If that happens to you, click once inside a blank area of the part of the page you need to print, then try printing again.)
   But when you save a Web page, your Web browser usually doesn't know what to do. It probably saves just the text, leaving out the pictures and everything else that isn't text. Or maybe it gives you a choice, letting you save the entire page -- and when you try to share that with someone (by e-mailing it, maybe), you can't even find it.
   But if you save a Web page as a PDF, all your troubles go away. Everything is saved, and something magical happens. No matter how you view the page you saved, it looks superb. It looks gorgeous. When you save a Web page as a PDF, you're saving a bunch of instructions about how your PDF viewer should reconstruct the Web page when you view it or print it.
   My enthusiasm could not possibly be any stronger. I've switched over to PDF entirely. Any time I want to save any sort of document that is more than just text, I save it as a PDF. (I don't save single images as PDFs, but I've had great success saving collections of images, such as Web pages full of pictures, as PDF documents. The images look great whether viewed on the small monitor on my oldest PC or on the giant screen of my Apple G4, and when I print such as PDF the results are spectacular.)
   Obviously, when you save a Web page as a PDF, you can then send the PDF as an e-mail attachment to anyone who doesn't have access to the Web or to that site. This is a huge help to anyone who uses a notebook computer; sales reps can show off an entire Web site this way, without any need to connect their notebook computer to the Internet.
   I go a step further. I put PDFs like that onto CDs so I can mail the CDs to friends and family. That way I know everyone will be able to see what I send in maximum quality, no matter how they view the documents.