A Basic Print Tool

Hi @trinity7, thanks for sharing your feedback. It gives me some direction on what to work on next.

It would be helpful if we could work through these issues- not just so it will work better for you, but hopefully prevent any disappointment for future users.

If you can, could create support issues for: the links not working, images not appearing, and videos not appearing? (Mentioning what browser you’re using, and a link to the post/page where you’re seeing that problem would be great… we can’t discuss specific links in a review here as it’s against the www.ads-software.com support policies, but in support threads its fine.)

I tried making an ebook from one of your posts using dotEpub and it worked ok for me, so it would also be helpful to know (in another support issue again) what link you were using (so I could try it and see if I get the same result) and what error message you received.

I had thought about avoiding requiring users to install dotEpub in order to create eBooks, but figured I’d wait to hear if anyone was actually using that feature before spending more time on it. So I’ll take your review as an upvote for that feature!

All the best!

Michael, thanks for the follow-up. I am using your app to generate a copy of all of my posts, and I wish it also included pages, preferably first. I am impressed by the stability of your app, for sure. It runs like a train.

The links in my posts are reproduced in the proper color when I create pdf;s or dotepubs, but the link does not function, nor does my cursor detect an active link on hover in the .pdf’s. Color far too light in epubs at the pre-saved stage. “Saving as” results in a 30Kb file size and no option to open in Win10.

In the dotepub runs, I noticed that the font was much larger than it should be, and bold, man. Like IMPACT ??

Adding the dotepub addon was simple, probably no reason to change that for now.

Title – program will not run if there is no site “title”, and my title is an image, so I had to add a text title to get the app to run.

Clutter at top edge: the “https://www.jerrywdavis.com/?post-type=post&order-date=asc&order…..” is at the top of every page, Can we get that removed?

Categories: Can we deselect categories that we do NOT want printed? I write some off-topic content sometime, and deselecting those categories would be a nice feature ??

epub: links work and media content (youtubes) work prior to “save as…”
epub: links are wrong color (much too light to be visible)
epub: font is big, think IMPACT 24/30
epub: saved file size on four attempts = 3 x 30Kb and 1 x 630Kb.
epub: no saved files open, no reader in win10?

Looks like epub is a long way from home, and .pdf is, too.

follow up if I am not clear on something, and thanks.

I continued to evaluate your plugin and found the “Settings” where I can select categories, tags, inclusions and other things. I selected a couple of categories, added a line at the bottom of each post, started each post on a new page and selected .pdf as my output format.

This seems to break the process, as the “Loading Content” spinner never stops spinning.

Too bad, because if your plugin worked properly, it would be a really nice one with meaningful functionality. You have the right ideas, but the programming is deficient.

I’m running WP 5.3.2 on Win10/64 and Firefox 72.0.1

Hi again @trinity7, yes that’s quite a laundry list of issues! Some of them sound specific to your site and theme.
What browser are you using to generate the PDFs? If I recall correctly, the Firefox add-in “Print to PDF” doesn’t make usable links, but Google chrome does. I’ll try to see if I can reproduce on your site (although watch out: forum moderators have removed plugin reviews when there are links in them, so it’s best to create a support issue where links are allowed.)
I may not be able to address all those issues right away, but I do hope to in the coming weeks.

FFox latest.
Print to PDF: yep, so your app uses Print to PDF to create the image?

You mentioned Chrome as a pdf solution, so I booted up Opera and created the pdf through it and presto! Links work fine.

Let’s try the Categories issue…perfect.

So maybe recommend chrome-based browsers. I should try it with Brave Browser later.

One thing Michael. At the bottom of ever page is a long string…https://www.jerrywdavis.com/?post-type=post&order-date=asc&order-menu=asc&include-private-posts=1&taxonomies%5Bcategories%5D%5B0%5D…

How do I remove that from the .pdf?

Hey @trinity7, sorry I’m catching up with all the items you reported. I’m going to create separate support threads for each issue, so they don’t get lost and so others with similar issues will be able to find them.

For starters, I made https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/how-to-remove-url-from-header-footer-in-printouts/#post-12351549 for your most recent question about removing that long string at the bottom of each page. I hope you don’t mind but I’d like to continue the discussion around that item on that support issue.

Also created https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/links-dont-work-in-pdfs/#post-12354118 for the issue where hyperlinks don’t work for certain browsers.

FYI someone else encountered the issue with the dotEpub printouts having huge text.
That was resolved in 2.1.5. Thanks for reporting that (other issues are still in-progress.)

Hi @trinity7, just an update:
+I’ve added some text to the FAQs and in the print setup page mentioning that links don’t appear in PDFs generated with Firefox and Safari. See the bottom of this FAQ: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/print-my-blog/#how%20do%20i%20create%20a%20pdf%20using%20print%20my%20blog%3F
+I added a FAQ regarding missing images in PDFs: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/print-my-blog/#my%20pdfs%20are%20missing%20images
+I fixed the issue where dotEpub would fail creating eBooks when there was no site title
+because your theme has a dark background, but the print page uses a white background, a lot of the text was hard to read on that page. I made it so the text should now always be black regardless of what the theme has
+there was a bug that made the eBooks text all appear inside a header. That was fixed

-I’m not sure what video links and embeds weren’t appearing in your PDFs. If you could point them out that would be helpful.
-I would also like to add a way to include both posts AND pages in printouts (instead of just OR) although that will be a more major undertaking
-I will create a post about how to remove the URLs and clutter at the top and bottom of printouts. Hasn’t happened yet though.
-removing posts from printouts based on category is another good feature suggestion, I might want it myself, but that also probably won’t happen just yet
-you mentioned “This seems to break the process, as the “Loading Content” spinner never stops spinning. ” but I wasn’t able to see that happening on your site. If you can provide a link to the page where that’s happening that would be helpful.