Partial least squares (PLS) is is a dimension reduction method and uses the same method than principle components regression but it selects the new predictors (principal component) in a supervised way.
The PLS approach attempts to find directions (ie principal component) that help explain both:
PLS look for a direction in which the original predictors varies that are also related to the response.
In principle, partial least squares should be a huge gain over principle components regression because it chooses the direction looking at the response but in practice, PLS often does not give a huge gain over principle components regression (PCR).
Ridge and principle components regression work as well and are both simpler.