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Introducing a new PDF renderer

· 2 min read
Andrés Ortiz Corrales (angrykoala)
Andrés Ortiz Corrales (angrykoala)
Co-creator of My Guitar Tabs

We have rolled out an improved PDF export; a feature we first introduced almost a year ago!

Since then, more than 17,000 PDFs have been created with My Guitar Tabs! Just in the past month, you’ve been making and sharing over 100 PDFs per day on average.

As one of the most used features, we've put a lot of time and effort into making our PDFs as good as possible.

Why​

Our original implementation of PDF export, introduced in version 1.11.0, was based on the browser's built-in "Print" functionality; something you're probably familiar with. This allowed the browser to generate a PDF, while the app tried to make the tab fit nicely.

This worked fairly well, but because it relied on the browser, results could vary. Chrome on desktop usually produced good results, but other browsers such as Firefox or Safari, especially on mobile devices, often generated less than ideal PDFs.

On top of that, PDF export wasn’t available at all on iOS due to App Store permission restrictions.

What​

Introduced in version 1.13.0, our new PDF implementation builds the file from scratch. Instead of relying on the browser to fit the tabs into a PDF, we can now teach each detail of the layout ourselves.

This means we can ensure the output looks exactly how we want it, and more importantly, it works the same way across all devices and browsers.

The future​

For most users at the moment, the change is subtle. We’ve tweaked the borders, fit more rows per page, and made a few other small adjustments.

But this is just the beginning. We're now working on adding more improvements and customization options to PDF export.

Other goodies​

PDF export has been the main focus over the past few weeks, but Dani and I have been busy improving other parts of the app as well:

We're also actively working on a few improvements that should be available soon:

  • New icons 🧑‍🎨
  • Add support for zoom on certain browsers and devices 🔍

As always, you can check out all the latest changes in our public changelog.