Posted by Tina Clarke on the Expression Web team. . . Seems to be what some of the customers here are looking for. http://www.pdfdownload.org/ All the best, Mark
It looks good but maybe a little early in its development cycle to work 100% correct for some web pages. I saw the "web to pdf" feature and thought - excellent there's a good tool for taking a pdf snapshot of a web page for email campaigns / newsletters etc. So I tried this feature out from here with one of my existing web pages that renders perfectly well in FF3.1, 3.5, IE6,7,8 Chrome 2.0.1 and the resulting pdf document layout was unfortunately completely destroyed. There's nothing much too complex about this html/css - a 3 column floating div thing. I don't rule out a css bug in my stuff but it's a bit confusing because these pages do successfully render in all browsers I've tested with..and I suppose I was hoping for better html->pdf translation after reading point 16 here. The other thing I noticed it had a bit of a problem with is that it doesn't support JavaScript. Not that it should to any great extent, but if you have a web page that is dependent on JS to work (let's face it probably 75%+ of all web pages nowadays), your page script includes the <noscript> tag to add some support for those browsers that do not have JS enabled and within the <noscript> tag you include a message for those JS disabled browsers e.g. "You need JavaScript enabled in your browser for this page to work", when the pdf is rendered with "web to pdf", the content of the <noscript> tag appears in the final rendered pdf document..probably not ideal but could probably be worked around.. All that said, I do get the jist of what this project is trying to achieve and it holds promise for the future. It probably also works well for really simple pages.
...Nice testing. To be honest I just looked at the site then passed it on once it "looked" good. All the best, Mark
No problemo - it did look good so I thought I'd give a little once over. Not to beat anyone up over its current shortcomings, except perhaps the Nitro PDF Software team; I must keep in mind that it is a freebie product so I guess I'll just post the issues that I've found in their support forum at some point ;-)
...I think you did good. ;-) You seem to have a good handle on a lot of this. . . if you want to teamup on some Webcasts for Microsoft/DASP let me know. (I can definitely use some help.) All the best, Mark
Thanks. In my experience in s/w development and testing, it's always worthwhile to have a peer review and/or sanity check on any work that's done. The issues I found were certainly present during my tests but may not be an issue for other testers for one reason or another. So far as your webcasts go, I'm happy to help out when I can. The slight problem is that I do start a regular permanent role on Monday next week so I probably won't have as much free time as I've had over the past eight months; for this reason a short while back, I refused the offer of moderating on this forum because I knew I would be committing to full time work fairly soon. I must say that I don't really know what's involved in creating a webcast so I'm definitely interested to learn more about that process - if you can point me in the direction of some useful info I would appreciate it.
Hi, Thanks. I do understand about "time". I'm almost 50 and my kids are 10, 7 and 5. (Oh my!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxOTR1wIcds What takes me so long for each Webcast is while being smacked around by my awesome kids I have spend so much time on research then testing. What helps the most is if anyone who is capable/willing is there to create a set of links to resources and a "script", then I only have to spend one day on the Webcast. I've got a MSDN Premium sub so any tools needed are no prob. All the best, Mark "wisemx" Wisecarver
That looks like fun with the sprinkler - usually it's me getting soaked by my nieces going mental with the hose in our back garden! The next time you have a requirement and a suitable subject to create a webcast for, I'll try and help by sourcing and writing up some script material for you. Just PM me and we can start a detailed discussion at that time. I mention 'suitable subject' because I'm not the type of person who attempts to be an authority in all technologies (I probably spread myself thinly across too many sectors and technologies already), but specific areas where I have some experience and that are interesting for me are: .NET 2.0 & 3.5 (C# language only, not VB.NET) ASP.NET web applications Winforms applications Compact framework / mobile applications SQL Server configuration and development Silverlight 2 LINQ WCF ASP.NET AJAX SOA .NET applied design patterns / UML System architecture Realtime systems That said, if you have something really off the wall feel free to run it by me and I'll let you know what I think about it.
...Thanks ;-) I'll keep that in mind, appreciate it. We're killing this thread so this will be my last post in it, respectfully...
