Reader Eric Margerum, like many of us, is using his iPad in place of a laptop. Yet there’s a feature he misses terribly. He writes:
One of the great features of the Mac since the introduction of OS X has been the ability to create a PDF document from the Print menu. I’ve used this feature frequently and I now have a pressing need to use something like it with my iPad. I’d like to call up webpages and print them as PDFs on my iPad. Is there a way to do that?
Most certainly. For $6 Dar-Soft’s PDF Printer for iPad will take care of it for you. Just launch the app, tap on the Web entry in the Sources column, enter the URL of the webpage you want to visit, tap the Send To button at the top-right of the screen, and tap Convert to PDF. The page will be converted and open as a PDF file within the app.
You can then view it as well as tap the Send To button again and choose the Open In or Send File commands. For example, you might tap Open In and choose the iBooks app. When you tap Send File, an email message appears that includes the PDF file as an attachment. Just address it and tap Send.
Note that webpages don’t always appear perfectly rendered. You’re likely to see a blank page or two and some of the page’s images and links may be rearranged. And, of course, since it’s a PDF, all links are now dead.
PDF Printer for iPad can convert more than webpages. You can grab files from your Dropbox account and convert them as well as convert files you’ve added to the app via another app’s Open In command. It’s easy to use and affordable. Give it a shot.
