PDF Download converts web pages to Portable Document Format

Viewing PDF files in your web browser can be a troublesome experience. Your PDF viewer (typically Adobe Reader) might have trouble accessing certain web-hosted PDF files, causing your browser to hang and force you to quit and start again. Then there's the question of sharing or archiving web pages on your computer. PDF is a quick and convenient format for both purposes, but your existing PDF creation tool (typically a free solution that installs as a basic PDF printer driver) is unlikely to be able to do a reasonable job of retaining the original web page's layout and content.

PDF Download is a plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer that aims to fix all of these problems and more besides. Once installed, it can be used to display web-hosted PDFs in your browser without the need for a third-party viewer (configure this from the Opening PDF tab of the plug-in's Options dialog). You can also opt to convert a PDF file into a HTML file -- use the Viewing PDF tab to set this up -- when attempting to view it.

PDF Download also offers a conversion service in the opposite direction. Take an existing web page, then click the PDF Download toolbar icon and opt to either save or email it in PDF format. The actual conversion process is handled by an online service, which can be rather slow at times, but despite not being 100 percent accurate does offer a decent facsimile of the original web page, making it worth considering if accuracy rather than speed is of primary importance. This conversion feature is also available to other browsers via a bookmarklet.

PDF Download for Firefox 3.0.0.2 and PDF Download for Internet Explorer 3.0.0 are both available and free to use. The Firefox plug-in was recently updated to add support to the new Firefox 4.0 browser, while PDF Download for Internet Explorer promises to work with IE7 or later, although we found functionality was limited to the PDF conversion feature during testing with IE9.