Save as PDF option

[sebast889]

Why/User Benefit/User Problem

To easily save a web page in PDF for formatting, portability and saving a local copy for later reading.

What/Requirements

Save as PDF option to save the current webpage as a PDF file

Acceptance Criteria (how do I know when I’m done?)

Feature parity with Fennec to save the current webpage as a PDF file

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

[yoasif]

49 thumbs up for this issue on Google Play.

A lot of tools I use disappeared with the changes made. Especially, print and Save as PDF. I do a lot of research and want to save items as documents for writing up research results, etc. The changes you made don't save the document as anything!

[vesta0]

Let's do a size:small investigation to determine dependencies.

[Poopooracoocoo]

There are extensions like GoFullPage that let you save a page as an image. Safari lets you save a page as a .webarchive. Desktop browsers let you download their html bundles or let you save an image through the developer tools.

[cadeyrn]

Desktop browsers let you download their html bundles or let you save an image through the developer tools.

Firefox 81 for desktop let you save webpages as PDF. 😉

[cadeyrn]

@aemjay: Please read the previous comments. They are working on it, making your comment completely unnecessary. If you're really interested in the feature let the developers do their job and don't waste their time with such threats ("as long as Firefox does not have feature X I will use browser Y"). That's not helpful.

[aaronwi]

@cadeyrn what specifically is taking so long to add back code that was removed?

[cadeyrn]

I can't answer any detail questions, I am not involved. But they didn't remove anything in this regard. Fenix has never had this feature.

[petertirrell]

To be fair Firefox for Android originally did have printing and saving to pdf capabilities and then lost them. This should have been treated as a regression, not a feature request.

[cadeyrn]

To be fair, Fenix is not Fennec, it's a different browser. Therefore it's not a regression but a feature request. But to be honest, it doesn't really matter how we call it, since Mozilla is working on it. At this point it won't make a difference.

[madb1lly]

To be fair this is the umpteenth time you've lectured us about Fenix being a different browser, the dev team should be left to work on it, yaddayadda. From a user perspective it's not a different browser because Mozilla chose to use the same app store entry for it as they had been using for Fennec, "org.mozilla.firefox", therefore the loss of the Save to PDF, printing and the loss of many other features are indeed regressions and not feature requests. Honestly, were probably very close to breaking app store rules when they replaced Fennec with Fenix.

I'm glad to hear that Mozilla are now working on this :)

[aaronwi]

To be fair, Fenix is not Fennec, it's a different browser. Therefore it's not a regression but a feature request. But to be honest, it doesn't really matter how we call it, since Mozilla is working on it. At this point it won't make a difference.

No one cares about the codenames or backend, you have to look at the users perspective, which clearly no one does both on android or on desktop versions, firefox is firefox, and it's terrible now. Look at brave, a completely complete user interface on android, windows and linux, everything works, printing works, even support for 'web3, crypto stuff', what has firefox done in the last decade? broken webextensions?. I just switched, and am not going back.

'working on it' for 3 years to add back the removed printing, which yes was removed, and no, no one cares from which version

[L31FY]

To be fair Firefox for Android originally did have printing and saving to pdf capabilities and then lost them. This should have been treated as a regression, not a feature request.

We were treated as hostile combatants for suggesting this before and it seems to be so again. Be careful or we will be banned for speaking that we don't love something about this new direction. This team cannot take criticism even of the most benign kind without lashing out and accusing you of flaming them or being hateful when you just report a bug or want something that broke fixed. It's also valid to question timeline on things and wonder why seemingly simple issues or feature regressions are taking extremely long to fix but they consider that to be hateful and not a point of discussion as can be seen above so I've gone to keeping my mouth shut as censoring was their intentions from the clear ban threats.

[aaronwi]

To be fair Firefox for Android originally did have printing and saving to pdf capabilities and then lost them. This should have been treated as a regression, not a feature request.

We were treated as hostile combatants for suggesting this before and it seems to be so again. Be careful or we will be banned for speaking that we don't love something about this new direction. This team cannot take criticism even of the most benign kind without lashing out and accusing you of flaming them or being hateful when you just report a bug or want something that broke fixed. It's also valid to question timeline on things and wonder why seemingly simple issues or feature regressions are taking extremely long to fix but they consider that to be hateful and not a point of discussion as can be seen above so I've gone to keeping my mouth shut as censoring was their intentions from the clear ban threats.

It appears they are actively trying to destroy the firefox brand to push everyone over to chrome, maybe google is paying the devs to do so. Remember not long ago how they re-arranged all the menu items? or botched all extensions with webextensions, or disallowed extensions from working on mobile for quite some time, actually, you still cant use most except approved on mobile anymore

[Nerixyz]

Could you please discuss this somewhere else?

Everyone subscribed to this issue/interested in this issue gets a GitHub notification for every (offtopic) comment.

If you want to show interest in having this feature added, react with 👍 on the original issue comment and most importantly, don't comment +1. If you want to get updates on this issue, click the Subscribe button.

[lazymonkey2]

@Nerixyz I don't agree, all comments here are relevant, even those ranting about the apathy of mozilla developers: they must know that users are not happy at all. The only off topic comments here are yours (and mine).

[cadeyrn]

all comments here are relevant, even those ranting about the apathy of mozilla developers: they must know that users are not happy at all. The only off topic comments here are yours (and mine).

It seems that you didn't unterstand that they're already working on the feature. Even if it were really necessary to write such comments (which I think is a pretext to vent frustration) - at this point it can't accelerate anything. The work they have to do won't be less if they get offended. It only causes notification spam for all the people who subscribed to this issue because they're interestered in getting status updates. And by the way, the time the developers have to waste for such comments is time they can't invest in developing. So it's in the best interest of everyone who is really interested in the feature to let the developers do their work and refrain from further bashing.

---

Some people should really learn that the only way to achieve something is to behave in a friendly and respectful way. Anti-social behavior and offending people (yes, they are people like you and me!) were never a helpful behaviour.

[FunkyBrewster]

It seems that you didn't unterstand that they're already working on the feature. Even if it were really necessary to write such comments (which I think is a pretext to vent frustration) - at this point it can't accelerate anything.

This thread was started in June, 2019, which means they've been "working" on it for over three years. Three years with zero progress or updates. People aren't just venting, they are users who want to support FF but are expressing that time has run out. I don't want a chromium-only web, but I'm at the point of biting the bullet and switching to what works.

[jonalmeida]

As noted in mozilla-mobile/android-components#12277 (review), due to some technical limitations we can integrate this feature in Fenix and keep it behind a nightly flag until we can get a fix to improve this situation.

[IGS-GIT]

Was tryna save a recipe, not find an internet battle about a missing feature. Gawd damn...

[julienw]

It's now available at least on the Nightly version of Firefox. You can find it at the bottom of the share menu.

[IGS-GIT]

It's now available at least on the Nightly version of Firefox. You can find it at the bottom of the share menu.

How about when I press a print option on a page? Will it know to bring up the print screen?

[L31FY]

It's now available at least on the Nightly version of Firefox. You can find it at the bottom of the share menu.

How about when I press a print option on a page? Will it know to bring up the print screen?

That's still not functional and the print menu item is still missing. Clicking a print button often does nothing or loads a more print friendly page only in this case.

I still don't understand why such oversight was allowed to happen and then be doubled down on, even calling the critical users the ones in the wrong, about basic usability and accessibility features. Insulting the userbase with disrespect and hostility and removing features is a direction I hope the team moves far away from.

[kbrosnan]

bz-1659818 is for window.print.