LINDON — Corda Technologies is trying to take the sting out of one of the biggest frustrations of dealing with the Web.
Its Highwire product, released in March, lets Web site developers allow users to convert Web pages into Portable Document Format, or PDF, documents that retain all on-screen elements.
Imagine printing from a Web page without having bad page breaks at the bottom or elements left off on the right side of the printed page because it was wider than the Web page format. Imagine retaining all the colors, graphs, maps and images onto the printed version.
Highwire, which is server-based software, does all that reformatting as it converts HTML or XHTML into PDF so everything fits on the paper and retains the look of the Web page.
Oh, and as a plus, it automatically adds column headings on each page of multipage charts.
"If anybody's ever hit the 'Print' button on their Web browser and had everything cut off on the right side or had it break a page halfway through text, that's one of the problems that Highwire solves," said David Vandagriff, vice president of marketing for Corda.
But how about those "print-friendly version" options some Web sites offer?
"They spend a bajillion dollars to get the Web page to look just perfect, and then you hit the 'Printable Page' and you get this plain-Jane kind of thing," he said. "You lose all the color; you lose all the formatting, the branding and all of that. And for the company, it means having two sets of pages to maintain."
Highwire's conversions also make e-mail attachments look more like the Web page by allowing the user to use the PDF document as an attachment.
Examples of Highwire's capabilities are available at www.corda.com.
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com