Save Webpage as PDF

Nekomajin

@ayespy
Opera has a new feature to save the page to PDF as it is visible on the screen, without using any CSS for printing. Basically it's a screenshot, but with editable text components. I think the OP requested this feature.

Artex

@duarte-framos I'd rather have a simpler process which is right click and click save to pdf. Fast and easy. Sometime ctrl+p takes huge amounts of time to load the page preview among other things.

fbinnzhivko

Save as PDF. is must to have like a option.

uhm

Why even use these proprietary formats like PDF? Start to move away to FOSS and remove the prisons you're desiring to control you,

ROTFL

@uhm "PDF was standardized as an open format, ISO 32000, in 2008, and no longer requires any royalties for its implementation"

um.... please verify Your knowledge before posting

TowerBR

The great advantage of Opera's "save as pdf" is that - like no other browser or add-on - it saves without breaking the pages.

I'm migrating from Opera to Vivaldi and this is the only feature that is not yet 100%

Ayespy

@TowerBR I take page captures from within Vivaldi and, if needed, convert the captured pages, totally unbroken, to PDF. And except for ridiculously long pages, that's the whole scrollable page.

Nekomajin

@Ayespy
How do you keep the text?

Ayespy

@Nekomajin Run it through OCR if I need text.

Nekomajin

@Ayespy
Isn't it easier to have it in one step?

This feature is one of the few good stuff left in Opera.

Ayespy

@Nekomajin Yes, it's easier for the user, and a huge mass of coding for the developers - because in order to generate a searchable PDF from a web page, one basically needs to write an entire free-standing PDF app and then incorporate it into the browser. Opera, with over 200 coders, can afford this. At the moment, Vivaldi cannot. This is the sort of thing I see coming to Vivaldi well down the line. In the meantime, I make do as needed.

One of the vendors from whom I buy inexpensive, high-quality and efficient software has been working on a PDF app for six years. It's been available to purchase for four years, and this year began to actually be of pretty good quality. PDF apps are a bear to code.

TowerBR

@Ayespy

So, for now, the only way is to keep saving the pages with the same old breaks ...

In the end, Vivaldi, even without it, is still much better than Opera.

Ayespy

@TowerBR Saving direct to PDF does reformat the page, and does not preserve editable text.

However, saving a capture of the page, converting it to PDF and OCR'ing the PDF gives one an unbroken page with searchable/editable text.

Nekomajin

@Ayespy
There are dozens of HTML -> PDF converters on the internet. I don't say it's an easy task, and I don't even say it's top priority, but it's a very handy feature.

sverx

Capture > Full Page > Save as PDF.
(It's a feature request of course, I'm not saying it's there...)

Ayespy

@Nekomajin We should disambiguate between converting to PDF and converting to searchable PDF. Convert to PDF (image) means little. It's trivial. Convert to searchable PDF (formatted image and text) means a lot. These are nearly unrelated activities. It appears the main desire here is convert to searchable PDF. Even many applications that claim this ability actually often break the format in trying. MS Word is one such.

Pesala

To be frank, trying to save a webpage as a PDF from Vivaldi is a waste of time. One has to accept that it is not yet up to the task. Open it in Opera and save it as a PDF to get text and active links, without losing the formatting.

Nekomajin

@Ayespy
I was talking about the searchable one. I have tried a few of them, and the text was selectable.

Ayespy

@Nekomajin And these do this with HTML? Example?

Nekomajin

@Ayespy
https://html2pdf.com/
https://www.sejda.com/html-to-pdf
https://www.onlineconverter.com/html-to-pdf
https://pdfcrowd.com/

Just a few from the top search results.

This is just a guess, but I think the magic behind this feature is a simple pdf printer, using the media="screen" stylesheets and a few variables like page width and height.