TIP 101: Handling Page Breaks in PDF Conversion

When you convert Web pages to PDF, you have to consider that the recipient may want to print the document to paper. You have to take the flexibility and elasticity of Web design and fit it into the constraints of the printed page. This means that long pages are often broken into multiple printed pages, and GoLive offers you lots of control over exactly how that conversion happens (Figure 101a).

• Using a Single Page Layout: Enable the Single Page Layout option in the Inspector palette, and even really long pages (up to 200 inches deep) will be converted to a single PDF with no page breaks. Disable this option if you want to convert long Web pages to multiple PDF pages.

• Breaking Tables: Enable this option to allow HTML tables to be split across pages. If you need HTML tables to stay together on a page, don't enable this feature.

• Breaking Images: If you're comfortable with images being split across the bottom and top of two pages, check this option. Normally we would never check this option so that each image can be viewed in its entirety on one page of the PDF.

• Forcing Page Breaks: You can force page breaks at specific points in your Web page with a simple comment. Just drag a comment from the Basic section of the Objects palette to the Layout Editor where you want the break to occur. Select the comment in the Layout Editor and type GLPDF:Pagebreak in the Inspector (Figure 101b). Note that this shouldn't change how the page is rendered in a Web browser, but only how the page is converted to PDF with GoLive.

  Figure 101b. Insert a comment of GLPDF:Pagebreak to force a page break when converting to PDF.

  

  
  

Figure 101a. Use the PDF Creation Inspector to control how one long Web page breaks into multiple PDF pages.

Using PDF for Review

If you use PDFs from GoLive for your clients to review and approve Web page designs, you should probably use the Single Page Layout option. The exported PDFs will look and behave more like a real Web page, and if you send the email review with Acrobat 7 Professional, anybody with the free Adobe Reader 7 can submit comments for the design. A completely digital review cycle is finally possible.