Using PrintMe Internet Printing

Acrobat offers support for the PrintMe Internet Printing service that enables you to print your PDF documents to any printer on the PrintMe Network or any fax machine in the world, which is a great convenience for globetrotters. To use the feature, just choose File➪PrintMe Internet Printing. If you’re not already signed up, the PrintMe Networks dialog box. Select the New Users radio button, and then click the Signup Now! button in to open the PrintMe New User Signup dialog box, where you fill in the form and get a new user account. Upon registering as a user with PrintMe Internet Printing, a PrintMe print driver is downloaded to your computer and you then follow the onscreen prompts to install the driver. After installation of the print driver, the PrintMe Networks dialog box reappears, enabling you to log on to the network.
To use PrintMe Internet Printing, follow these steps:

1. Open the PDF document you want to print to a remote PrintMe printer or fax machine and choose File➪PrintMe Internet Printing. The PrintMe Networks dialog box opens
2. Enter a new name for the printed document in the Title text box (the current document title appears here by default) and then select either the Print All Pages or Pages options in the Page Range area. If you select Pages, enter a range of pages to print in the text boxes provided, and then enter the number of copies to print in the Copies text box. By default, the My Favorites radio button is selected in the PrintMe To area.
3. Choose a PrintMe destination or fax number from the Most Recent drop-down list that displays the last ten PrintMe destinations or fax numbers used.
4. To choose a new PrintMe printer or fax number, click the More button (black triangle) if it’s not already selected when the dialog box opens.
5. Click the Printer radio button and then enter a new PrintMe destination in the PrintMe ID text box or the telephone number of the destination fax machine in the FAX# text box.
6. Click the PrintMe button to send your PDF document to the selected PrintMe enabled printer or fax machine.

The PrintMe Networks dialog box also provides an Address Book used to store PrintMe destination Printer ID’s and fax numbers as well as a searchable online directory that lists the name and Printer ID numbers of host printer locations currently signed up with the service. The service enables you to print to any fax machine whose telephone number you know. Click the Address Book button to access your PrintMe Address Book or the Find button to locate a PrintMe printer in their online directory.

To add a PrintMe destination or fax number to the Address Book, choose Add to Address Book and enter a name for the printer or fax number in the appropriate text box as it will appear in your PrintMe Address Book. The entry is added to your Address Book when you click the PrintMe button. Click the My Account button to go online and view status and statistics of your PrintMe account. Note that after selecting a printer in the PrintMe Networks dialog box, the Options button activates and provides you with additional printing options that vary depending on the selected PrintMe enabled printer.

Refreshing updated content

Some Web sites, especially those that cover current affairs or the news, frequently update the content of some or all of their pages. If your purpose in capturing Web pages is to keep up-to-date on the information offered by a site, you will need to refresh the pages on a regular basis to ensure that your file has the most recent content.
To refresh the content of the captured pages in your PDF file, choose Advanced➪Web Capture➪Refresh Pages. Doing this opens the Refresh Pages dialog box. Click the Refresh button to have Acrobat check all the pages in the Refresh Commands list for updates. By default, the program compares the text of the captured pages with their counterparts online. If Acrobat detects any discrepancies between the two, it automatically updates the downloaded page in the PDF file by replacing it with a copy of the latest page on the Web site. If you want Acrobat to compare all elements on the Web pages when looking for the ones that need refreshing instead of just comparing the text, select the Compare All Page Components to Detect Changed Pages radio button in the Refresh Pages dialog box before you click the Refresh button.
If you want to exclude certain pages from the Refresh Command list, click the Edit Refresh Commands List button to open the Refresh Commands List dialog box. This dialog box lists all the pages marked for refreshing. To skip particular pages in the refresh operation, click the Clear All button and then select the URLs for all the pages you do want refreshed to highlight them before you click OK.
Keep in mind that you can’t add new URLs to the list displayed in the Refresh Commands List dialog box: You can only tell Acrobat which ones to ignore when refreshing the pages. The only way to add a URL to the Refresh Commands list is to capture its Web page when the Save Refresh Commands check box option has been checked in the Web Page Conversion Settings dialog box.

Adding linked pages to a PDF file

Another way to add Web pages to a PDF file that contains captured Web content is through the Web links displayed in the Select Page Links to Download dialog box. For this method, you view all the Web links on a particular Web page in the PDF document, and then select the ones for the additional pages you want to append to the current PDF file as follows:

1. In the Acrobat 6 Document window, display the Web page whose links you want to use for downloading new pages.
2. Choose Advanced➪Web Capture➪View Web Links. The Select Page Links to Download dialog box opens.
3. Click the URLs in this list for all the Web pages you want to add to the current PDF file. To select multiple individual URLs, Ctrl+click them. To select a continuous range of URLs, click the first one and then Shift+click the last one in the range. To select all the URLs for downloading, click the Select All button.
4. Click the Download button to add the Web pages for the selected URLs to the current PDF file. Note that if you don’t want to select individual links and are sure you want to download and append all pages linked to the current Web page displayed in Acrobat 6, choose Advanced➪Web Capture➪Append All Links on Page.

Modifying the Web capture conversion settings

Before capturing Web pages from a Web site, you can modify the conversion settings that tell Acrobat how to treat their content in the new PDF file. To do this, click the Settings button on the bottom-right side of the Create PDF from Web Page dialog box. (To open the Create PDF from Web Page dialog box, choose File➪Create PDF➪From Web Page.) Clicking the Settings button opens the Conversion Settings dialog box, The General tab is divided into two areas: File Type Settings and PDF Settings. In the File Type Settings area, you see a list box listing all the types of text and graphics files that are downloaded and converted in the new PDF file.

The only settings that you can modify in this list are the HTML and Plain Text settings. When you click either one of these types, the Settings button to the right of the list box becomes active.
When you click the Settings button when HTML is selected in the list box, Acrobat opens an HTML Conversion Settings dialog box, where you can control the default layout, colors, and fonts displayed in the Web pages you capture. Don’t mess with any of these settings if your purpose is to do a design review of the Web pages you’re about to capture because these changes could prevent users from experiencing the pages as the designers intended. The PDF Settings area in the Web Page Conversion Settings dialog box contains the following four check box options:

• Create Bookmarks: When selected, Acrobat automatically creates bookmarks for each Web page you download, using the page’s title as the bookmark name. Note that if a page doesn’t have a title, Acrobat uses the page’s URL address as the bookmark name.
• Create PDF Tags: When selected, Acrobat creates and stores a hierarchical structure in the PDF file that tells special screen-reading software for the visually impaired how to sequence the various Web page elements for reading at large magnification. The support for screen readers is part of Acrobat 6’s new group of Accessibility features designed to enhance the usability of the software for people with disabilities.
• Place Headers and Footers on New Pages: When selected, Acrobat creates page headers and footers that display the title of each Web page in the header at the top of the page and the URL of the page in the footer at the bottom.
• Save Refresh Commands: When selected, Acrobat saves a list of the URLs for all the pages captured in the PDF file that it can use to later check for updated content. You must have this conversion option selected when you capture Web pages if you want Acrobat to be able to automatically download new versions of the Web pages when it detects updated content.

Modifying the Web capture preferences

When you download and save Web pages as PDF files in Acrobat 6, the program uses a set of default capture settings that you can modify. To change the Web capture settings, choose Edit➪Preferences or press Ctrl+K (Ô+K on the Mac) to open the Preferences dialog box. Click Web Capture in the scroll list on the left side of the Preferences dialog box to view those options.
You can modify the Web Capture default settings by changing any of the following options:

• Verify Stored Images: This setting tells Acrobat how often to check online for updates to the images on the Web pages that you’ve captured in your PDF files. When the default setting, Once Per Session, is selected, Acrobat automatically checks for updates just once when you first open the PDF file (provided that you have Internet access at that time). You can change this setting by selecting either Always (for continuous checking) or Never on its drop-down list.
• Open Weblinks: This setting indicates whether Acrobat should download and save new Web pages in Acrobat when you click their Web links or simply display the pages in your Web browser. Note that the Specify Weblink Behavior dialog box inherits the setting you select here as its default (which you can override by holding down the Shift key when you click a Web link).
• Show Bookmarks Panel When New PDF File (Created from Web Page) Is Opened: This check box tells Acrobat whether or not to display the Navigation pane with the Bookmarks palette selected when you first open a PDF file with the captured Web pages. Deselect this check box when you don’t want to give up valuable viewing real estate in the Document window to the Navigation pane. Note that Acrobat creates bookmarks for the downloaded Web pages whether or not this check box is selected.
• Skip Downloading Secured Pages: The radio buttons under this heading indicate whether or not Acrobat should skip over the downloading of password-protected Web pages on the site you’re capturing. Select the Always radio button to have the program immediately skip over all such pages. Select the After radio button and specify the number of seconds in the associated text box to have the program stop and prompt you for the site’s password dialog box for the number of seconds specified, only to then automatically skip the downloading of that page and continue downloading other pages if you don’t respond to the prompt.
• Reset Conversion Settings to Defaults: This button resets all the conversion settings to their original values (see the following section for information on changing the conversion settings).

Creating Web links in a standard PDF file

You can have Acrobat 6 convert all complete URL addresses (ones that follow the full format that includes http:// in the address) entered in a standard PDF file (one not created with the Web Capture feature) into active hyperlinks by choosing Advanced➪Links➪Create from URLs in Document. To have Acrobat scan all the pages of the document for URLs to convert to live Web links, click the OK button. To have the program convert the URLs on just some of the pages in the PDF document, select the From radio button and enter the page number of the first and last page in the From and To text boxes, respectively.
After Acrobat 6 has converted the URLs on the specified pages of the PDF file to active links, you can follow the links by clicking them with the Hand-with pointing-finger mouse pointer. Note that when following the Web links you add in this manner, Acrobat uses the Web link behavior that’s in effect at that time. This is indicated by the icon that’s added to the Hand-with-pointing-finger mouse pointer: The appearance of a plus sign (+) means the page will be downloaded and added to the PDF file, whereas a W indicates that the page will open in your Web browser.

Opening Web Pages as PDF Files

To be able to capture Web pages (and even entire Web sites) as PDF files for viewing in Acrobat or Adobe Reader, all you need is Internet access, Acrobat 6, and the Web site’s URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Before you can use Acrobat to capture Web pages, you must have your computer correctly configured for accessing the Internet. If you already get online with a popular Web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, Acrobat should be able to detect these settings and use them for Web capture. If you find that you can’t capture Web pages as described in this section, open the Internet Properties dialog box from within Acrobat by choosing Edit➪Preferences➪Internet Settings, and then seek help from your ISP (Internet service provider) or IP personnel in getting your Internet settings correctly configured in Acrobat.
The steps for capturing the pages are easy as can be:

• In Acrobat, choose File➪Create PDF➪From Web Page, or click the Create PDF button on the Tasks toolbar and choose From Web Page on the pop-up menu. The Create PDF from Web Page dialog box appears.
• In the URL text box, type or paste in the URL address of the site whose Web pages are to be downloaded. If you’re converting a local HTML document to PDF (that is, one that’s saved on your hard drive or local area network rather than on the Internet), click the Browse button. Then open the folder, select the document’s file icon in the Select File to Open dialog box, and then click the Select button. 3. In the Settings area of the Open Web Page dialog box, select the Get Entire Site radio button to capture all the Web pages on the site.
• To capture only the Web site’s start page, leave the Get Only radio button selected with 1 in the level(s) spinner button text box to the immediate right.
• To capture all the pages linked to the start page, increase the value in the level(s) text box to 2; to get all the pages linked to the pages linked to the start page, increase the level(s) value to 3, and so on.
• To restrict the Web page capture to only pages found on the same Web site or on the same Web server, select the Stay on Same Path and the Stay on Same Server check boxes as well.
• Click the Create button to begin capturing the designated Web pages as PDF files.If you select the Get Entire Site radio button, the Potentially Large Download Confirmation alert dialog box automatically appears, warning you that you may have bitten off more than your computer can chew. If you’re sure that you have the patience (or a lightning-fast download connection), have sufficient hard drive space, and are not attempting to download the Library of Congress Web site, click the Yes button to proceed with the potentially large download of the entire site. As soon as you click the Download button or the Yes button in the Potentially Large Download Confirmation alert dialog box, Acrobat begins downloading and converting the designated Web pages and displays the Download Status dialog box, which keeps you informed of the progress of the first part of the downloading process.

As the Web pages start arriving on your hard drive, the Download Status dialog box disappears as quickly as it appeared, and the first page of the Web site appears in Acrobat’s Document pane. The Navigation pane with the Bookmarks palette selected is also automatically displayed in the Acrobat window. The Bookmarks palette illustrates the hierarchical relationship of the pages you downloaded as it continues to display the names of the pages on each level as they are successfully downloaded.
If Acrobat is not able to download the complete contents of all the pages on the levels you designated for download, it displays a dialog box called There Were Errors that lists all the files that it could not find or otherwise successfully download. After reviewing this list of files, click the OK button in the There Were Errors dialog box to close it.
After all the Web pages you asked for on a particular Web site are delivered to your hard drive, you still need to save the pages as a single PDF file so that you can access them in Acrobat or Adobe Reader without being connected to the Internet. To do this, choose File➪Save and then give the new PDF file a name, select the folder in which you want to save it, and click the Save button.

Capturing Web Pages

When you first hear that Acrobat 6 can capture Web pages as PDF files, you may wonder why on Earth anyone in her right mind would want to do such a thing. After all, Web browsers are not only perfectly capable of displaying any and all Web pages in their native HTML (HyperText Markup Language) format, but they are also much more widespread than Acrobat and Adobe Reader. And, of course, this is true — as long as you’re connected to the Internet. The moment you get disconnected from the Internet, all Web browser access to online content shuts off (unless your browser is capable of caching the pages on your hard drive and you know how to set this up). In this chapter, you discover how easy it is to capture Web pages as PDF files that you can browse at any time on any computer equipped with a copy of Acrobat or Adobe Reader. Because the Web pages are PDF files, not only can you browse them when you don’t have Internet access handy, but you can also annotate them and distribute them as you would any other PDF document. This makes internal Web site design reviews a real joy because it’s easy to send the PDF versions of the Web pages to clients and coworkers for approval, as well as elicit feedback from them right on the pages if they’re using Acrobat 6.
One of the best reasons for capturing a Web site in PDF format is to be able to browse its contents when you’re traveling and at other times when you can’t go online. This feature is also a godsend when you need to give a presentation or conduct a training session that involves the use of Web material because you still have access to the Web content (internal links and all), even if you lose your Internet connection or are not able for one reason or another to go online. When viewing Web pages in Acrobat or Adobe Reader, you can use the Full Screen view to get rid of all the distracting menus, toolbars, and so on because you will be using the site’s own links and navigation controls to move from page to page. You control what page transitions are used and how to navigate from page to page in full-screen mode by opening the Preferences dialog box (Ctrl+K on Windows and Ô+K on the Mac) and then clicking Full Screen in the list of preferences.