Save Webpage as PDF

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.

sverx

That's why I would add 'Capture full page as PDF', so that it looks like the page as is on screen, not the printed version.

Ayespy

@sverx When it's reasonable to dedicate the necessary resources to code it, I would not be surprised to see it appear.

Tcll

@Ayespy just to add my 2 cents, take it or leave it...
it's not like there isn't decent examples to copy from and fix up to add Opera-like functionality...

sure Vivaldi is arguably better than everything else aside from RAM use shooting up the past few updates (can no longer keep 12 tabs open without using swap on 2GB of RAM)...
but like, why let a slimy branch off a company you left make you guys look inadequate for something that should be relatively trivial for a small group of devs to figure out??

if Vivaldi was built by 1 person, sure I could expect this slow pace of development...
if you guys are just lacking motivation, maybe you should open source on GitLab (or your own instance of it) and let the community prop it up
you guys are making Brave look good

madonnaragu

@Nekomajin said in Save Webpage as PDF:

@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.

While these are useful, they do not work on URLs that are private/non-public. Opera has an AMAZING one-pade PDF output, which I really miss in Vivaldi.

Nekomajin

@madonnaragu
See: https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/190547

Knuthf

This is a Windows request, at least "Save As PDF" has been the OS supported option since 1985. Just selected printer and you get PDF. You can also select quality, protection and encryption with some effort.
I seem to remember that this is also on Linux Mint.

iAN CooG

@Knuthf said in Save Webpage as PDF:

"Save As PDF" has been the OS supported option since 1985

hardly, there was no PDF in the 80s

Nekomajin

@Knuthf
I don't think we can save any webpage exactly how it looks on screen with any PDF printer.

copaceticheart

I 100% support this suggestion and find it indispensable

I'm disappointed by the moderator in this thread who wants to talk this feature suggestion down because it so clearly has enormous value. One merely has to perform "Print to PDF" and Opera's right-click "Save as PDF" to see a night-and-day difference between the two outputs. The functionality is clean, simple and straightforward, and has been a killer feature since 2017 (so we're talking five+ years now).

Telling people they can run OCR on a screen capture is weak (especially since that readable/searchable text is already rendered on the page)

If Vivaldi is trying to create the best browser in order to gain greater userbase then taking note of the great features that matter on competing browsers are important.

When there's competition one party does not dismiss the innovation of the other—rather, they try to one-up them.

(This assumes Vivaldi is the underdog trying to be the next Firefox...if it's goal is simply 1% of the browser market share, then I suppose it can afford dismissing suggestions.)

Ayespy

@copaceticheart said in Save Webpage as PDF:

I'm disappointed by the moderator in this thread who wants to talk this feature suggestion down

I fear you are attributing a motive which does not exist. No one, to my knowledge, wants to "talk this feature suggestion down." I think it would be a great idea - and a real challenge to code.

TalGarik

@Pesala said in Save Webpage as PDF:

To be frank, the output from Opera is much better.

tomorrow this post will be 5 years old, alas it still says the truth
("much better" does not give the idea of the difference though, we are in the realm of big leagues versus little leagues)
btw it is curious to notice that only two browsers do it the right way AFAIK Opera and Safari

allanmax3321

This post is deleted!

Tcll

I just want to mention I've found a solution of my own, since Vivaldi clearly doesn't want to do stuff correctly and export a single-page PDF with original HTML formatting like Opera does

I've found an extension that pretty much matches Opera and doesn't export a PDF, though what I use is for FireFox since I now use LibreWolf as that doesn't phone home and track users like Vivaldi does
(you can test this with iptables logging and dmesg, vivaldi very much tracks you, though at least not every last thing you do)

the extension I use is called SingleFile, available here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-file/

though the source does claim to be compatible with Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi
https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile

so yeah, if you want to match Opera's PDF exports, this is the only thing that competes

though in my experience, it does seem to merge all JS into the page as well, so be weary of webpages that include fingerprinting malware and such, and make sure you use blockers like uMatrix for those cases...
though of course, this also isn't much different from Opera saving the same JS into it's PDFs
(what's worse is you can't block JS in PDFs from what I've seen, so this extension is actually more secure as you can actually block the malware)

the only real issues I've had with it are Twine-based games don't seem to work properly

but once again, everything else matches Opera, so this is a decent replacement solution for me
this is all I've ever asked for out of Vivaldi

I hope it can finally put this issue to rest for others, even if it isn't PDF specifically.

computerli

Guys I found this extension and wow, works great and has a lot of options. The extension name is Just-One-Page-PDF
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/just-one-page-pdf/fgbhbfdgdlojklkbhdoilkdlomoilbpl

stardepp

@computerli This extension is better and allows you to remove unwanted elements and advertising:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/printfriendly-print-and-p/ohlencieiipommannpdfcmfdpjjmeolj