With the economy taking a nose dive, people are looking for a way to save cash where ever they can find it.  One good way would be to save on ink and paper for your printer by instead printing to PDF.  That is only the start of it though.  Here are six PDF power tools for the Firefox browser:

PDF Download – The most powerful of the bunch, PDF Download allows you to do just about anything imaginable.  View PDFs in Firefox as HTML, automatically control how the browser handles the PDF format, and also convert any web page to a PDF you can save for later.

PrintPDF – Due to Apple people already having the “print to PDF” feature, this extension (which allows you to do just that) is for Windows and Linux users.  Print any page to a PDF file, and save on some paper!

PDFescape Extension – Want to edit your PDF files from within the browser?  PDFescape brings that functionality to Firefox.  PDFescape enables you to open and edit PDF files & forms online.

LOOP to PDF for Firefox – Upload, convert and combine your files to PDF from a tidy toolbar, without the conversion getting in the way of your Web browsing. LOOP for Firefox allows you to convert and combine files to PDF with the click of a button.

pdfit – This oddly named add-on gives you the ability to convert the current page to an image or PDF formats.  You can also apply some image filters, such as rotate or reflection, to give your conversion a little style.

Send to Google Docs – What does Google Docs have to do with PDF files?  This extension for Firefox allows you to view web documents in Google Docs.  It supports PDF files too. (as well as Microsoft Office and Open Office files)

Know of anymore PDF friendly alternatives for Firefox?  How do you handle PDFs online these days?

If you said yes, you win… well, you win nothing, but you do have the pride of knowing Firefox is a crafty tool in the right hands.  What I want Michael to do is left-click on his mouse and select all the text he wishes to print.

Got all the text from the article highlighted?  Good.  The next step is to go to the File menu and then select “Print…”. (You can also hit Ctrl + P)  That will bring up the Print Options box.  Under Print range make sure you select “Selection”.

Doing so will make sure you are only printing what you have highlighted from the article.  This way you can get rid of the useless junk like the sidebars and headers.  You only print what you need!  Hit the “OK” button and you should only print the article and none of the rest of the information on the web page.

The final result is a nicely formatted article without any of the rest of the junk you don’t need. 

Now you could just print the page that is there, but that is going to give you all the ads, logos and other junk you don’t want on your paper. The Lexmark crew is wanting to fix that issue.

The Lexmark Toolbar is wanting to be that “better printing” extension you never knew you needed. It will allow you to cut down on the clutter, so you will only print the most important details of the web page in question.

Some of the features in this beta release of the extension include:

- One-click Print and Preview buttons

- Remove ads and other unwanted stuff with the “Clean” feature

- View, edit or print photos in Picnik, the best online photo editor

- Choose print settings such as Selected Content, Orientation and Header/Footer

Overall, I think if they are delivering this much in the beta, there are many more great things to come for future releases of this handy extension.

This extension helps you to quickly find printer-friendly versions of webpages. A green icon indicates the presence of a ‘print stylesheet’. Webpages with a print stylesheet have been specifically formatted for printing. Click on the green icon to print.

+ Download and Install the Print Hint Extension for Firefox!