If you’d like to create PDF files on your own PC then the standard route is to install something like Bullzip PDF Printer. This adds a virtual printer driver to your system, and so whenever you want to convert a document to PDF, all you have to do is choose the Print option in a program, select that driver, then wait for the file to appear.
The strength of this approach is that it works with just about any application. But the weakness is that the finished results can be poor, especially with web pages, where you’ll often lose formatting and links will no longer be clickable. So if you need the best quality HTML conversion, you may prefer a specialist tool, such as Weeny Free HTML to PDF Converter.
To use the program you must first point it at the URLs or local files (HTML, XML or TXT) which you’d like to convert. Batch processing isn’t a problem, so feel free to add as many as you need. Note, though, despite the authors saying the program can convert websites, it actually only works with the page you specify (it won’t follow all the links on www.mysite.com to create a page for each one).
And with the pages added, all you have to do is click “Convert Now”, and Weeny Free HTML to PDF Converter will immediately go to work on your specified files.
If you were hoping to have detailed control over the low-level aspects of your final PDF then this could be a disappointment. You can’t set your PDF metadata here, there are no options to add watermarks, control image settings, add fonts, configure your document security or anything else.
On the other hand, it does at least make the program quick and easy to use. And better still, we found the final PDF files did a really good job of preserving the original web page format. Content almost always stayed in its original place (sidebars weren’t added as an afterthought at the end of the main document), and text-based links remained active and clickable in the finished document.
What’s more, we found Weeny Free HTML to PDF Converter made good use of PDF bookmarks. When we tried saving www.softwarecrew.com, for instance, the program not only saved the HTML code, it also identified various sections -- “Most Popular Posts”, “Latest Reviews”, “Latest Comments” and more – and added bookmarks to them. Just clicking one of these later, when you’re reviewing the file, and you’ll jump straight to that area of the page.
Weeny Free HTML to PDF Converter is very basic, then. It only converts a few document types, and doesn’t give you any control whatsoever over how the conversion process works.
There’s no doubt that the program does handle the core HTML to PDF conversion very well, though, and if that’s something you’d like to do regularly -- and you’re not happy with the standard PDF creators – then we’d recommend you check it out.
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