How To Create PDF Without Software
Portable Document Format (PDF) is the standard file format for the distribution of electronic documents and forms around the world. An article made to Digg's frontpage yesterday leading me to ponder why doPDF, a virtual printer driver to save files as PDF, was promoted over it's open source alternative PDFCreator. The latter is also free, more stable and best of all - it's rid of all advertisement/trojan/virus..etc.What really bugs me is that not only it was "dugg", but it was also blogged about in top places like Download Squad, Digital Inspiration, and Lifehacker just to name a few. Come on now, did you get paid or something? As a reader of these blogs, I respect and trust their knowledge but I was surprised to see none of them mentioned the open source software in the posts. Moreover, if your aim is "to print a web page, word document, photo or pretty much anything else" and save it as a PDF file, you don't even need to download anything.
PDF Sans Software
There are two methods to create PDF files online. Each method is followed by a list of available free services, first choices being the best based on extensive testing and personal experience.
1. Convert: Upload the document from your computer and the PDF is sent to your email address within a couple of minutes.
- Express PDF (DOC, RTF, XLS, HTML files and URL - max. 20MB size)
- PDF Online (DOC, RTF, XLS, MHT, TXT, PPT, PPS, PUB, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, WMF, EMF, GIF files - max. 2MB size)
- PDF Convert (65 file types supported, unlimited file size but max. 7 files per month. Also converts PDF to DOC or XLS)
2. Generate: Enter the address of the website and download the PDF instantly. No email address is required.
- PDF-o-Matic (URL, unlimited file size?)
- HTML To PDF (URL, unlimited file size?)
- HTML 2 PDF (URL, unlimited file size? Adds a watermark ad)
Productivity Tip: For the second method, you could save even more time by using the Add to Searchbar extension for Firefox and generating PDFs of the website you want to "print" directly from the search box.
Simple, huh? It is also easier for PC users than buying a new computer (e.g. Mac), installing a new operating system (e.g. Linux), or downloading a new set of software (e.g. OpenOffice).
Enjoy!
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