 |
|
 |
|
01.13.09 Converting Your Website to PDF  By Dave TaylorI just got a new iMac, after years of working on Windows XP systems, and a pal was telling me that one of the coolest features of Mac OS X is that you can redirect any printout and turn anything into a PDF. That's awesome because I constantly send Web pages to clients and PDFs will be a lot more reliable than the HTML source. Can you show me how to do this? Dave's Answer: Your pal is right that this feature is one of the coolest things about the Mac operating system, something that Windows users can't really imagine and something that, rather to my surprise, most Mac OS X users, whether they've got a MacBook, iMac or even Mac Mini, don't know about either. The trick is that the way the Mac renders pages you want to print is by converting them into a language called PostScript, which turns out to be the basis for PDFs: Portable Document Format. Since the printer driver (the operating system utility that controls printouts) has to convert whatever you want to print into PostScript anyway, Apple just went ahead and included the ability to save that intermediate PDF document in the OS. I'll show you how to do this for Apple's Safari Web browser, but it turns out that it's exactly the same in any Mac application that lets you print. Very, very cool. Load your favorite Web page in Safari, then choose File --> Print...: 
Choosing that brings up a complex window with lots of different choices to customize your printout:  What we seek is on the lower left corner: I've highlighted it with a red circle, above. Click on "PDF" and you'll see a new little menu pop up:  Lots of options, I always just use "Save as PDF...". Choose that and you'll get a standard Save File window: Continue reading this article. About the Author: Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is internationally known as an expert on both business and technology issues. Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four startups, he also runs a strategic marketing company and consults with firms seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs. AskDaveTaylor.com http://www.intuitive.com/blog/ |
||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||
 |
-- NetDummy
is
an iEntry, Inc. publication -- |
