IE Integration/Page Conversion

[Ryan]

As I have written before after previous evaluations, we think PDF-XChange is an awesome product.

However, the toolbar functionality in IE is a sticking point for us. Compared to the Acrobat toolbar functions, PDFX leaves a lot to be desired.

Acrobat has two toolbar buttons in IE: "Convert" and "Select."

Using the convert button it is a snap to get a perfect automatic conversion of a Web page with everything automatically sized perfectly to fit page width and/or auto portrait/landscape select with user adjustable threshold and a lot of other really nice options. The rendering is a perfect reproduction of the page... no fooling around required, it just works automatically.

With the PDFX convert tool, you have to play with all the settings to manually adjust page width and other settings, and the rendering seems to often come out lacking in the end anyway... backgrounds aren't right, sometimes looks distorted, etc. It is very difficult or impossible to get a perfect, page width reproduction of a Web page, whereas with Acrobat it is a slam dunk.

Mind you Acrobat also allows lots of manual control when needed, but the automatic adjustments that simply work... and reproduce a perfect looking replica of the original page are unmatched.

Also, the "Select" button in Acrobat is extremely useful. It allows you to select, even non contiguous portions of the Web page and then convert the selections to pdf.

In either case you can either convert or append to an existing pdf.

For our needs, PDFX does everything we need very nicely except this. If the PDFX IE integration was improved to match or better that of Acrobat's, we would no longer need Acrobat at all and could go with PDFX. But we can't do without this Acrobat feature, so unfortunately we will have to stick to that for the time being.

Please consider beefing up this part of PDFX. It would make it a slam dunk for us. I think this is a pretty accurate comparison, but if I am missing anything, please let me know. Thank you.

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi Ryan,

thanks for the post and suggestions. The IE addin to convert web pages was created specifically to address some of the limitations that all Virtual Printers face when converting pages, specifically that a virtual printer is entirely dependent on the print rendering web browsers produce which is notorious for changing the layout of pages, especially complex layouts with frames etc. I'm sure you can appreciate that it is a great improvement on File --> Print.

Having said that, nothing is perfect and in general it does a pretty good job in most cases but if you have some URLs that it does a poor job of perhaps you could send us a few examples? We are in the process of updating the drivers and the IE addin that is a part of that. Some examples would be helpful as we do this.

I should point out that there is a significant price difference between PDF-XChange and Adobe Professional and even Standard, and whilst we will do everything in our power to improve this convert tool we cannot promise to deliver everything that Adobe do.

Regards the 'Select' tool - I have added that to the feature request 'wish list' and it will be considered as we develop V5 of the drivers. No promises at this point however.

We do appreciate the feedback and your support of PDF-XChange.

hth

[Ryan]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the helpful response. Let me make it clear that I think that PDFX is a superb package -- in many ways the best of breed on the market. Everything I say here is in the context of this one feature -- albeit an important feature for us.

Here are a couple of examples of pages that seem to convert well in Acrobat, but not in PDFX. I used default settings in both.

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Windows-XP-Startup-Faster

and

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... arrest-him

I'll attach the converted files for each. On the first one, note that the PDFX conversion is missing some sections on the right, and has other areas that are not faithful copies of the original. This happens to one degree or another on the majority of pages I have seen converted.

On the second one, the PDFX version is quite inaccurate compared to the Acrobat version and almost not recognizable as the same page.

There are other types of problems, but these are two quick examples.

Maybe the conversion process can be improved. I hope this is helpful.

Sorry... had problems uploading the files and not sure if they went through ... I think you will easily see what I mean if you go to the URLs and convert them.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Ryan,

And thanks for the follow up comment and the samples.
I will pass those to one of my colleagues working on the IE add-in for further investigation, but the only issue I see is the smaller thumbnail images missing (in both samples) + the banner in the second.

For the banners I'd presume you do not need them anyway - and they work on a different principle - so we might not be able to obtain their content i the same way as the rest of the web page, and as for the missing thumbnail images - we will check what can be done.

You can find my two converted files attached.

Additionally - there is a "convert selection" option in our IE add-in as well - once you have a portion of a web page selected it will be active in the drop down menu for our add-in.

Best,
Stefan

[Ryan]

Thanks Stefan. You guys are terrific!

Interesting. Yes, on the fist one, there are only a few things missing. But that can still be a problem. If you look at the "recent changes" section on the right hand column, for example, it is missing all the text contained there.

Regarding the second one, your conversion looked a lot better than mine. I suspect that it may have something to do with my ad blocking settings, but I don't know.

I should also mention that most pages I have tried with PDFX had at least some problems... some more than others. Few rendered as completely as the Acrobat conversions. I just picked two I quickly found at random. I am not sure that they demonstrate all of the potential problems.

In any event, I think both of these pages came out virtually perfectly without changing anything with the Acrobat conversion. I will attempt to attach the two Acrobat files here for you to see. So I know it can be done (just don't ask me how!) If Adobe can do it, I know that your guys can do it twice as well !

The holy grail is something that can create a perfect (as possible) pdf rendering of a Web page sized and complete, with links, images, backgrounds, banners and anything else you see when you look at the page in your browser, text searchable, with nothing but a click. It should contain everything the viewed page contains. I think that is the true value of the converter plug in. I think Acrobat has it down pretty well.

I appreciate you guys taking a look at what can be done with PDFX to that end!

Meanwhile I will take a look at the PDFX IE feature you mentioned. I was not aware of that feature.

Thanks again!

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi Ryan

we have created a Support Request Ticket to track the progress of this. RT#1419: IE Integration/Page Conversion

We will update this post when we have something.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Ryan,

After discussing this in the team here is what's happening:
"The IE plug-in simply copies the web page as it is shown in IE (if it is possible in vector image in order to select a text). Therefore, in this case we are limited to how the page is displayed in IE. Adobe are using their own rendering method.
By the way, copying occurs in the first seconds of loading a web page, so if any content on the page loads later, it'll not be included in the PDF."

Best,
Stefan

[Ryan]

Hi Stefan... thank you for explaining that.

I'm not very handy with the technicals of pdfs but I interpret that to mean that making the conversion do what the Acrobat conversion does would mean a significant rewrite of the entire conversion process, and that isn't in the cards. Am I in the ball park with that interpretation?

Some thoughts...

1. Is it possible to at least add the dialog that allows you to append, prepend, overwrite, etc. if the file exists when you do a conversion? Right now I don't think you can do that.

2. I don't know how much of some things that don't seem to come out right have to do with what you said about the copying happening in the first few seconds. That might be a big factor or a relatively trivial one in some cases or most cases... I just don't know. Would it be possible and would it make any sense to have an option to delay copying, to adjust for any time lag that may exist? If it could provide a significant improvement in at least some cases, maybe it could be an improvement.