Printer Friendly Tips for IE

    by Steve LeBlanc © 2005 rev:2005.10.31a

Problem: I hate it when I want to print the first few paragraphs of a webpage and I get page after page of junk, mostly ads, graphics and navigation links. It's a waste of ink and paper. Here are some ways around that.

  1. Printer Friendly: Look for a "Print This" link or button on the webpage. This will bring up a "printer friendly" version of the page without ads or navigation links. Sometimes it reads, "Print" or "Printer Friendly". Sometimes it's a printer icon image on the page rather than text. Occasionaly does it simply launch the print command, bringing you to the Print dialog box.


  2. Select and Print: Assuming you are using IE6 or above, select the text you want to print and hit File / Print. But here's the key. Under Print Range, change the radio button from "All" to "Selection" and press OK. This will print out only the part you have selected. Note: When no text is selected on the page, this "Selection" option is grayed out. Note2: This does NOT work when you simply hit the print icon in the toolbar, which automatically prints the page, bypassing the Print dialog box. Geeky alternative: Select text, R-click / Print.


  3. Copy to editor: Select the text you want and copy it to the buffer: R-click / Copy. Then open a text editor, like Notepad.exe, and paste it in (rclick / Paste). Geeky alternative: Drag and drop the selected text into the editor. Print it from there. This has the added benefit of being able to collect and edit a number of different sections and print them all on one page.


  4. Strip Formatting: iyhy.com Strips out all formatting of most any site. You just enter the URL in the textbox and hit Go. Unlike the "printer friendly" links on particular sites, IYHY leaves in virtually all the navigation links. Some pages with Flash and JavaScript are hard to unformat and will return errors. I created some Bookmarklets for IYHY to make the process even easier.


  5. Use Bookmarklets: Bookmarklets.com has some Page Look bookmarklets but they are old and not very good.


  6. Firefox Extensions: If you are using the Firefox browser (and every geek should GetFirefox.com ), you can experience the joys of extensions. The Web Developer extension is a great way to clean pages, even for casual users. Nuke Anything Enhanced is small and simple. Platypus 0.51 offers persistant changes to certain webpages. Remove It Permanently 1.0.5 also for persistant changes. Read Easily 1.0.1 lets you turn off styles of ugly pages (nice, but no options). URI id 0.1 4k offers site-specific userContent.css (but many said it didn't work, and is built in to FF1.5?) Adblock 0.5.2.039 with Adblock Filterset.G Updater is the favorite ad blocker.


  7. Print Preview: Sometimes, they have already created a Printer Friendly version of the page in CSS. But it only shows up during an actual print. To find out, click on File / Print Preview. See if it looks different than the regular page. Also note which pages actually contain what you want to print. Save ink and paper by only printing those pages.


Example 1: This Pdftk Man Page has a very subtle printer icon in the lower right (next to the email envelope icon, just before the comments). You get bubble help when you hover your mouse pointer over the envelope and printer icons which reads, "Printable Story Format." Click on that icon to see the printer friendly page.
Example 2: drupal.org/node/22953 is a great example of a simple link called: printer-friendly version. Bottom of middle panel.
Example 3: www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/wa-dw-wacass-i.html offers a great example of doing it wrong. Their "Print this page" suggests a printer-friendly page, but all it does is bring up the Print dialog box. This about.com page, What is a Printer-Friendly Web Page? has a red "Print this page" link on the right which actually does bring up a Printer Friendly version. Much easier to read, without navigation and ads.

For Webpage Developers

webdesign.about.com/cs/css/a/aa042103a.htm