I thought making pdfs from webpages would preserve the liveweblinks, but I just did a bunch and the links are not working. Yet I've see them keep the link in that past, so I'm confused!

it depends on the link. If the link is absolute, it will work. if relative, it probably won't work.

absolute: h++p://www.finetunedmac.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=newreply&Board=18&Number=15780&what=showflat&fpart=1

relative: /forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=newreply&Board=18&Number=15780&what=showflat&fpart=1

(they can also be relative to a particular directory on a server)


(wow you should see the mess ubb made when I tried changing http to htp)

V, thanks, well I just made a pdf of this thread and no hand symbol comes up at all.
Why for some reason do I remember or think that pdfs could handle live links? Maybe I was wrong.

How did you do it?

I just hit command-P > Save (this thread) as PDF, and almost all of the links work, the exceptions (all of them, I think) being "My Stuff," "Active Topics," and "Search."

Edit: Screen name links don't work either; all non-working links show "javascript:void(0);"

I'm guessing you were viewing this thread in Firefox when you made the PDF; artie, meanwhile, was no doubt viewing it in Safari. When I was in Safari, my experience replicated his, but in Firefox, it replicated yours.

Perhaps a reason not to dismiss Safari altogether?

> artie, meanwhile, was no doubt viewing it in Safari.

Correct...my bad for not having mentioned it.

DK,
I tried in Safari and still get no hand symbol for links!
I doing a command P, PDF, Save as a pdf.

Did you try every link on the page? As I mentioned, not all of them work.

DK,
yeah, don't work! my stuff , active topics etc, nothing.

In post #15786 I specifically mentioned that "My Stuff" and "Active Topics" are not working links.

Did you try "Forums" and the others at the top left of the page? Those, among others, work for me in Safari.

Edit: You know, it's pretty rude to respond to me and address your responses to dk.

Keys are you opening the PDFs in Adobe Reader, Preview, or another PDF viewer? I just created a PDF using your technique and when I opened the resulting PDF using Adober Reader 10.0.3 the cursor changed to a hand when I rolled it over a link and although I did not test every link on the page all of those I tested. My Stuff and Active Topics triggered the Security Warning window, but did not go further probably because they are menus not single link items.

When I tried to open My Stuff and Active Topics in Adobe Acrobat 10.0.3 I got the following very informative message:

When I opened the PDF using Safari My Stuff and Active Topics first popped up a security warning and then
Google Chrome opened the PDF and the regular links opened perfectly, in fact in a more straightforward manner than Safari, but the JavaScript links My Stuff and Active Topics turned the pointer to a hand but did not do anything when clicked.

When I attempted to open the file in Firefox, it asked if I wanted to use Adobe Reader to open the file. Google Chrome opened the file and handled the links the same way as Safari, but without the additional security questions.

My conclusion from this testing is:

• My Stuff and Active Topics on the FTM web site are working links in HTML
• Simple links in PDF files do work
• JavaScript links/menus embedded in PDF files may be recognized as links, but the JavaScript cannot be reliably interpreted if it can be interpreted at all
• Of the apps tested only Safari and Adobe Acrobat Pro provided any meaningful feedback about the JavaScript links

Thanks Joe.
Nothing works currently in either Safari or Firefox.
Tried to right click and chose other, but Chrome was greyed out.
Anyway, it's a disaster right now for links. So I may start saving things again as html pages. But pdf is so much nicer. it's a shame!

I had no trouble making PDFs of this page in iCab and Firefox. The links are openable in Reader and Acrobat. However, not all the links with a "hand" in Reader or Acrobat work. The posters' names show a hand but no page opens (in the browser they have drop-down menus). Other links are openable. There was no difference in iCab whether the page was PDF-ed through save as or print commands, except for the link format. Save as gave a more accurate link (the whole thing on one line) but the print command broke the long link into two lines and only the upper part opened. Short links (home, forums, etc.) all opened fine. However, Preview was not able to open Virtual's long link (absolute), although the FTM links opened up.

macnerd10's experiment brings to mind my habit of putting the complete URL for an important Web page I want to save with workable links into the Spotlight Comments box for the saved file.

In my experience, Safari usually saves Web pages with workable links if the Print dialog box's Print to pdf option is used, but it is always prudent to check the content and links if the Web page is important to you. There are some Web pages that Safari has serious problems with, which may be due to non-compliant html.

Well, it's not a link in the original html, since he substituted plus signs for tees (h++p rather than http), so it would be exceeding strange for it to turn into a link in the PDF.

And still iCab shows it as a full valid link... Although, in agreement with your remark, in the browser it is not a link!

Okay so I am an inveterate experimenter, but why the links are not working for Keys has me puzzled.

NOTE: In the interest of complete accuracy, add Search to the list of links that do not work. Like My Stuff and and Active Topics it comes out as a Javascript:Void(0) link.

In my latest round I tried

1. printing to PDF using the Adobe PDF option which is availabel when Adobe Acrobat is installed. Surprise! none of the links work in the PDF created by Adobe Acrobat. I checked the JavaScript setings in Acrobat > Preferences but unless I am missing something, and I easily could be, I could find nothing that would make a difference.
2. If I print a page to PDF from Camino, Firefox, or Google Chrome, none of the links work. Ie. I am getting the same results you are seeing.
3. If I Print to PDF from TurboWeb I get the same results as I do from Safari. Since TurboWeb is based on Apple's WebKit this is not a big surprose.

Summing up to this point:

1. The Mozilla browsers (Camino and Firefox) do not appear to be capable of doing what you want.
2. Google Chrome does not appear to be capable of producing the results you want either. (Google Chrome is a very different code base from Mozilla, but the genesis of all these browsers have roots that are deeply embedded in Microsoft Windows. Apple and Microsoft take very different approaches to generating screen and print images and as a matter of pure speculation, I would suspect this is at the root of those browser's failure to produce your desire results.)
3. The JavaScript menus are unlikely to ever work in PDF.
4. WebKit based browsers are capable of producing most of what you are looking for.

All of which leads us back to your original question. The only way I can think of to progress from here is to ask more questions to further isolate the problem. If you have already answered some of them, please bear with me and answer them again. It is helpful to have everything in one place.

1. Your signature indicates you are using OS X 10.6.2. I know this has been asked and answered in previous threads, but is there a burning reason you have not updated to OS X 10.6.7?
2. What version of Safari are you running? The current version is 5.0.5
3. Have you tried opening the PDFs in Adobe Reader 10.0.3 or Preview and if so, did the links work there?
4. How long has it been since…
   1. You quit and restarted Safari?
   2. You shut down your Mac and performed a "cold boot"?
   3. You reset Safari, specifically:
      1. clear history
      2. remove webpage preview images
      3. empty the cache
5. Do you have any Safari extensions installed and if so do you have Automatic updates turned on in Safari > Preferences > Extensions?
6. Do you have any active Preference Panes that effect Safari?
7. Do you have anything running that modifies or effects the user interface or screen display?

Joe, ok good news.
I have been creating these from Firefox, not Safari.
Ok, I just created pdf from Safari and now I see links working.
So creating from and opening in Safari is the key.

I totally moved over to Firefox last year. I found Safari so unstable with pages, I'm much happier overall with Firefox, but this is odd. I guess the gang who makes Firefox is not Mac happy or don't care much about Mac.

I am in 10.7 need to change sig now.

PS, Joe, I know you are busy, guy, but you are one of my favorites here, as is Tacit. Tacit can't solve this thread, I would love, if you have time to see if there is a solution:
http://www.finetunedmac.com/forums/ubbth...15755#Post15755

Oh good! I was running out of ideas for places to look.

If you read my post, you would see that Firefox works fine. Maybe your install is faulty, or there are some preferences about Javascript that are checked and should not be, maybe you did not update Firefox for a while. In my system it does work. Which means, this is not a Firefox problem per se.

Off: your system should be 10.6.7, not 10.7 (Lion)

Mac, yes 10.6.7
FF seems to work fine, I'm on 4.0.1

so lost why FF having this issue.
I'll post there too.

Hmmm...joemikeb, dkmarsh, and I do not get working links from Firefox, same as kevs. (FF 4.0.1/JavaScript enabled)

I dunno.

Well, the result seems to depend on how you make that pdf in Firefox. In my hands, using FF 3.6.17 on a G5 iMac running Mac OS X 10.5.8, the Save As PDF option via the print menu doesn't render clickable links, let alone working ones.

However, with the PDF Download add-on, the pdf produced yields clickable/working links as in Safari. Only thing, 'PDF Download' is slow.

Thanks for that; I wonder if it explains Alex's anomalous results?

Joe,
This gets curiouser and curiouser...
Today, I tried everything in Firefox and all links are dead. Using 4.0.1 in 10.6.7 MacPro (latest). No option (save as PDF, compress PDF, save as Adobe PDF) works. Have no idea what is going on. Will restart and try again.
Sorry for the confusion.
After restart, no change - links do not work. Tried Google Scholar search with many paper links - same thing. iCab works just fine.

Don't you hate it when that kind of thing happens?

I suppose it's possible that although you made PDFs in both iCab and Firefox, you opened the same iCab-made PDF twice, thinking that it was the Firefox-made PDF the second time. I find I'm apt to make this kind of mistake when dealing with multiple files of similar names.

So we agree Firefox has an issue with pdfs.

Tried to be careful but it could be as you say...

Yes. So do Opera, Sea Monkey, Camino, and Flock. The only working ones in my hands are iCab and Safari.