WebGrabber Release Notes 2013.1.0.14088
WebGrabber 2013 Build 2013.1.0.14088
This article contains the release notes for ActivePDF WebGrabber 2013 (Build 2013.1.0.14088). The WebGrabber 2013 product is a new release of WebGrabber.
New Features
This release includes the following new features:
New API—The updated API includes new classes and enumerated results. The new calls are more explicitly named, making them easier to understand, while improving consistency across future product releases. See our examples site for new WebGrabber 2013 examples: http://examples.activepdf.com/WebGrabber/2013
Enhanced Font Support—Support for WebFonts (fonts licensed to allow the use of real typography online) has been incorporated.
Conversion Engine Options—Choose from either the Native Engine or Internet Explorer (IE) Engine depending your needs for speed or fidelity.
New PDF Features—This release includes support for AES encryption, digital signatures, and stamping and watermarking output PDFs.
Streamlined Architecture—WebGrabber's new architecture reduces the number of services required and simplifies internal communication.
Improved Performance—The architectural redesign has improved overall processing efficiency, yielding greater performance than ever before.
Enhanced Error Handling—Errors are handled via the Results object in .NET and the WebGrabberResult object in COM.
Enhanced Troubleshooting Tools—Improved logging and Support Tools provide more detail for troubleshooting and resolving problems.
Enhanced Documentation—Documentation has been consolidated and is now presented in HTML5 format, which includes new features, such as enhanced Google-style search results.
Browser-Based UI—The new UI, known as the Configuration Manager, enhances usability, improves load times and makes managing multiple profiles and settings easier than ever.
Support for Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2012—WebGrabber 2013 now supports Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2012.
Important Changes
The Configuration Manager
The Configuration Manager is the new, browser-based UI that lets you easily manage the settings and profiles for all your ActivePDF products in one place.
Starting the Configuration Manager
To start the Configuration Manager, double-click the Configuration Manager icon on the desktop. The Configuration Manager opens in your default browser's window. If you are unable to connect, make sure the address in the URL is correct.
Use the format:http://###.###.###.###:PORT.
For example:http://127.0.0.1:90.
WebGrabber uses Port 90.The License Manager
The ActivePDF License Manager has been updated to simplify the process of managing and maintaining product licenses. To learn more about the License Manager, see the License Manager Reference.
Change to Default Port Assigned to WebGrabber
DoPrint was deprecated in favor of the new ConvertToPDF method. Ensure that you not only change your code so that it uses ConvertToPDF rather than DoPrint, but also make sure that you check the port being assigned to WebGrabber. By default, the assigned port was 54545 for .NET deployment, and 58585 for COM deployment. The default port, as set with ConvertToPDF, is now 90.
Remote Submissions
ActivePDF Webgrabber 2013 supports remote submissions, allowing you to submit URLs or HTML files to your application's server from a remote location.
The following requirements must be met to perform remote submissions:
- The server machine on which your application resides must have a fully licensed version of ActivePDF WebGrabber installed.
- The remote machine must also have WebGrabber installed.
- If using the WebGrabber COM object, the submission should use the default port 90.
- If using the WebGrabber .NET object, the submission should use the default port 57975.
For more information, see Remote Operations with WebGrabber 2013.
Bug Fixes
The following bugs were resolved in WebGrabber 2013.
| Bug ID # | Description | Resolution | Fixed in Build # |
|---|---|---|---|
2498 | URL hyperlinks are cut off at the margins in the output PDF. | Using the IE Engine and setting FitToPage = False resolves this issue. | 14088 |
| 2936 | FILE SPECIFIC: Converting hebrew.html file results in missing lines. | The issue was resolved. | 13332 |
| 3129 | A remote conversion using a large input string for CreateFromHTMLText results in a -99 timeout error, regardless of Timeout value. | A subsystem was updated to prevent size limits on named pipes. | 14057 |
| 3136 | Calling MediaType = 1 does not retain the screen CSS. | An update was made to the Native Engine. | 14057 |
| 3141 3176 | The IE Engine creates a blank output PDF when a web font is used. | The issue was resolved. | 14057 |
| 3177 | FILE SPECIFIC: Line breaks are ignored in sample HTML. (Native Engine only) | The issue was resolved. | 13347 |
| 3289 | Specific URLs that redirect result in blank page conversions. | The Native Engine was updated and the new property, WaitBeforePrinting was added. This property specifies the time WebGrabber waits before printing the URL, allowing asynchronous objects to load in the page. | 14057 |
| 3824 | The conversion output includes abnormal text spacing. | The issue was resolved. | 14081 |
| 3825 | The conversion output includes a large space at the top of the page, although no margins were set. | The issue was resolved. | 14081 |
| 3826 | Apostrophes in the input are replaced by special characters in the output. | The issue was resolved. | 14081 |
| 3829 | Attempts to convert https://www.go-acceleratus.de/ time out and result in an Error -3003 in WebGrabber 2009 and WebGrabber 2013. (Native Engine only) | The conversion is successful when the IE Engine is used. | 14088 |
| 3835 | UI settings for margins and page dimensions are ignored. | The issue was resolved. | 14088 |
| 3838 | Using CSS with the "@fontface" command results in blank output. | The issue was resolved. | 14088 |
| 3839 | Using CreateFromHTML with special characters results in unexpected output. | The issue was resolved. | 14088 |
| 3842 | Using a UNC path as the output directory results in Error -10099. This issue occurs even when run by a local administrator with full access to the UNC path. | The issue was resolved. | 14088 |
| 3847 | The output PDF has extra lines. | The issue was resolved. | 14088 |
| 3854 | When viewed in the browser (IE), the source contains images on the left. Once converted, the images are at the top of the output PDF. | The Native Engine was updated to handle images and text appearing in the same cell. | 14088 |
| 3858 | CreateFromHTMLText results in output that is missing lines. | The issue was resolved. | 14088 |
| 3863 | When a bad certificate is encountered, WebGrabber hangs or produces blank output. | WebGrabber now handles bad certificates, returning an Error -3003 when encountered. | 14088 |
| 3865 | When passing a URL-encoded character, WebGrabber converts the encoding rather than the character. | The issue was resolved. | 14088 |
| 3867 | When a specific Font is used, page gets converted but the Font is substituted | The issue was resolved. | 14088 |
| 3942 | Extra pages are added in place of page breaks, and paragraphs are not aligned appropriately for Right to Left languages. | The issue was resolved. | 14081 |
| 3944 | DEMO keys added to the registry by the installer impact performance, causing file merging to take longer than expected. | DEMO keys are no longer installed automatically. | 14081 |
Known Issues
This section lists known WebGrabber 2013 issues. When a known issue is fixed, it is moved to the Bug Fixes table. Note: The availability of a workaround does not imply that a particular issue will not be fixed.
| Bug ID # | Known Issue | Workaround |
|---|---|---|
| 271 | When using page breaks, the bottom cell of a page is split improperly, resulting in the text being split between two pages. | Use page-break-inside, where applicable. See Resolving Table Rows Split Across Pages for instructions and cautions. |
| 1313 | When converting HTML to PDF, the first page of the output PDF has a larger amount of space before the first line of text than do subsequent pages. | This is an issue with a third-party component. See HTML to PDF Conversion with the Native Engine Results in Inconsistent Spacing for a workaround. Alternatively, use the IE Engine. |
| 2673 | PDF hyperlink locations are shifted when the linked text is located within a table, and when margins are applied to the output (Native Engine only). | N/A |
| 3037 | EmbedFlash does not work for an absolute path. | Use a virtual path rather than an absolute path. |
| 3038 | SetOutputSecurity encrypts the title when no metadata is passed. | Pass in metadata via the API or the UI. |
| 3130 | CreateFromHTMLText output is missing some lines. | Convert the HTML file directly without using CreateFromHTMLText. |
| 3133 | Text at page break is cut off when SetMargins is used. (Native Engine only) | Use the IE Engine. |
| 3134 | Japanese characters in text areas are garbled in the output PDF. (Native Engine only) | Currently, the workaround is to use the IE Engine. Note: PDF text boxes will not be preserved. This issue will be resolved in a future release. |
| 3135 | Converting Right to Left languages results in paragraphs that are not properly aligned. In addition, extra pages appear for page-breaks in the output PDF. | In some cases, removing the first page-break-after in the HTML and changing the remaining page breaks to page-break-before will resolve the issue. |
| 3137 3779 | Intermittently, dynamic charts created with Google Chart Tools are not included in the output PDF. (IE Engine only) | Current workaround is to use the Native Engine. |
| 3139 | FILE SPECIFIC: Converting an HTML file containing Kendo UI graphs results in the following error, "This page contains the following errors: error on line 1 at column 891: Expected '#' or '[a-zA-Z]', but got ' '. Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error." (Native Engine only) | Charts should be modified to utilize HTML character codes for special characters in embedded titles (i.e. replace "&" with "&"). |
| 3142 | HTML anchor links are not handled correctly in the output PDF. | Feature Request #246 has been created to support creation of internal PDF links when converting files with anchor links. |
| 3146 | FILE SPECIFIC: There are extra horizontal and vertical lines inside the output PDF. | The HTML should be updated to ensure that the border is inside the <div> tag, rather than inside the table cell. |
| 3147 | Including a .PNG image in the input HTML results in an increase in the text font weight, causing it appear bold. | Current workaround is to use the IE Engine. This will be resolved in an upcoming release. |
| 3148 | A dotted line that is clearly visible on a web page, appears as a solid line, or a randomly broken line in the output PDF. Zooming may make the line appear dotted. | Current workaround is to use the IE Engine. This will be resolved in an upcoming release. |
| 3172 | Conversions using IE9 and IE Engine result in output file size increases by 80 - 100% over that of files converted using IE7 or IE8. | See WebGrabber Conversions with Internet Explorer 9for workarounds. |
| 3414 | Values of text input boxes or text areas are not preserved in the output. (Native Engine only) | Current workaround is to set HTML form fields font property to use one of the Base14 fonts. Alternatively, use the IE engine (Note: Text boxes are not preserved with the IE engine.) |
| 3703 | The size specified in the HTML for an SVG image is not respected, and results in an extremely small image in the output PDF. (Native Engine only) | Current workaround is to use the IE Engine. |
| 3774 | Font names in Document Properties > Fonts of the output PDF are garbled in conversions using the IE Engine with IE9. | See WebGrabber Conversions with Internet Explorer 9for workarounds. |
| 3813 | The output PDF is not editable. The error, "All or part of the selection has no available system font. You cannot add or delete text using the currently selected font," appears when attempting to edit the PDF. | See WebGrabber Conversions with Internet Explorer 9 for workarounds. |
Examples
Visit the ActivePDF Examples site to see updated examples for WebGrabber 2013:
http://examples.activepdf.com/WebGrabber/2013
Documentation
See the following link for the Legacy section of the Getting Started Guide (including installation instructions) and the WebGrabber 2013 API Reference at:
https://www.activepdf.com/support/documentlinks.