One of my recent projects is a semi-social networking site and as a requirement, the administrators wanted the ability to make PDF copies of user profiles. So I had to find a solution that would convert HTML web pages into PDF's on the fly, since each profile was different from the next. Additionally, the administrators wanted to generate multiple PDF's at a time as there would be thousands of profiles to convert. Of course, saving server resources and limiting the time it took for these conversions to take place was of the essence. So I had to find a low-footprint solution.

My project is developed using ASP.Net with VB.Net as a server-side scripting language, so I had to find a solution that would integrate with .Net. After looking at several different solutions, I found that WebSupergoo's ABCpdf .Net™ was just perfect for my purposes. With some code samples that I received from the very responsive WebSupergoo support staff, I was able to get my profile-to-PDF generator up and running in no time. The method that takes a URL as a parameter and then takes a snapshot of the entire page--links, images and backgrounds all included--ended up being less than 30 lines of code.

It took a few tries to determine which would be a safe number of web page profiles to convert to PDF at a time, but the administrators are happy with the outcome. They do not have to load the profile page first and then click a button togenerate the PDF like some of the other solutions that I considered had required. They just select the profiles from a table and then click a single button to generate PDF's for all the profiles at once.

Some of the other great features that were selling points to me:

• Can modify existing PDF documents
• Fully supports HTML & CSS
• Supports a wide range of graphic formats: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG, EXIF, WMF and EMF
• Text formatting options such as indent, line spacing and word spacing
• Supports TrueType and Type 1 fonts
• Supports fields and forms
• Supports RGB, CMYK and Grayscale colors. This means you can produce high-quality print-friendly PDFs directly from your application.
• Complete feature list

ABCpdf is not just for converting web pages into PDF's. You can also use it to build new PDF's from scratch using various elements that can be added to the PDF page(s). You can see ABCpdf in action here.