Review of LOOP extension for Firefox

If you are always printing PDF files, check out LOOP for Firefox - the new kid on the block for off-the-fox PDF conversion. The PDF (Portable Document Format) used to be the exclusive domain of Adobe. Then, if you are not willing to fork out the cash, you can only read but not create PDF files. But since quite a long while back, many alternatives to Adobe Acrobat Writer has sprung up. And among them, we have many free choices such as the in-built version in OpenOffice and PDF printers such as the CutePDF which I am currently using. So how exactly is LOOP different? Let's talk about webpages. For OpenOffice, we would need to first do a manual copying of the web content and then paste it into OpenOffice Writer. Following that, we have to save the entire document in PDF format. Alright, so 2 quite tedious steps here. For CutePDF, we would just print the webpages like how we would print on our physical printers. The difference is that we print to CutePDF instead of spooling to the real printer. This is just a one-step pretty-effortless process. As for LOOP, you get to play with an icon on your navigation toolbar. One of my complaints is that we need to log in to our LOOP account before printing is possible. Creating a LOOP account is quite a breeze but I find the need to log in each time I need to print PDF files to be quite a chore. In this sense, it is not as clear-cut as e.g. CutePDF. Another complaint is that though we can remove the files after printing, there is no certainty that the files might not be backed up somewhere. Those concerned about privacy may be worried about this possible breach. If I am printing a sensitive document, I would need to accept the risk of it being intercepted by LOOP. But of course, I am just trying to be paranoid here - LOOP is likely not doing anything "extra". :P I also find the "add url" option handy yet inconvenient. Using LOOP, we can just browse to a page and click "add url" for auto-conversion of the webpage. However, what I would love to see is for us to paste the URL directly to LOOP for it to do the printing. If I already know the URL, I would rather just print straight than having to visit the page first. Since an advantage LOOP boasts is background printing, it makes more sense not hogging up the bandwidth going to a page we just want to print but not view. As for why I like LOOP, it is the option to arrange/reorder the pages I print. OpenOffice can do this but CutePDF can't. However, I don't see how this option can be very useful (though it is definitely nice to have). There is also the option to combine multiple sites into 1 PDF file. This is certainly more useful since if I use CutePDF, I would need 10 files for 10 pages instead of a neater combined 1. Using OpenOffice, rearranging is possible though I would say that printing PDF files for webpages using OpenOffice is a rather unorthodox way of getting things done. Now let us look at printing PDF files for non-webpage files on our computer such as a Word or PowerPoint document. For OpenOffice, the format we are printing from would need to be "compatible". If you can't open it, you can't print it. As for CutePDF, it would be a clear winner over LOOP unless you need the file-combining option. While experimenting with printing a discussion at myLot , I managed to compare the difference between LOOP and CutePDF. You can see the LOOP result here . As for the CutePDF one, see here . To begin, LOOP set the default viewing to "fit page" unlike CutePDF which uses "fit width" - which I feel is better for reading the details. Whichever, even after I apply "fit width" to the LOOP's version, I find the text relatively smaller than CutePDF's. In fact, I find it too small to read easily - I need to manually enlarge the text size to read. Another peculiar thing is that though I am logged in to myLot , LOOP prints an unlogged-in version. This means that LOOP is not really printing in a WYSIWYG manner. LOOP wants you to go to the URL in question, then it will use this address and go to it itself again to do the printing - this is the only possibility I can think of for the page to be printed unlogged-in. I must give credit though that at least for this experiment, LOOP prints so much nicer and neater than CutePDF. For those who do a lot of PDF-printing off webpages, I think LOOP is worth a look. You might like it better than a normally PDF-printer. If you need to combine and rearrange pages often, this is also for you. For me though, I find needing to log in a hassle and I don't want an extension installed that I won't likely use often. So for now, I think I will give LOOP a miss and stick to CutePDF. I might install it again when I next need to combine pages and that's about it. :-) Update: Tracy Powell from Drawloop Technologies has replied to some of the questions I raised in my review. You can click on the comments to read it. :D