Print Friendly Optimises Web Pages For Printing

I'll second copy/paste into a Word Processor.

I really only ever print articles for my radio show (I use a laptop, but its easier to read paper on long articles).

That way I can get rid of everything but the text, which websites (even the best of them with "print formatted" versions) fail to do.

downstairs

ok is it just me, or does the guy in the video sound like a pedofile??? wtf

And, I prefer printwhatyoulike.com as two people have mentioned above.

atomicrabbit

@[www.printwhatyoulike.com] it blew my mind...

I highlight the passage I want and "print selection". easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

I've been using the Click2Zap bookmarklet for years [lifehacker.com] , and just tried [www.printwhatyoulike.com] 's bookmarklet this morning, after seeing mentioned in the comments on the Nuke Anything post. PrintWhatYouLike wins by far.

This one gets you started by removing all but what it determines to be the main content, but I wonder if that'll work well all the time (and I bet you wouldn't want it all the time).

Remember this post? [lifehacker.com]

Just run the bookmarklet and edit the page to delete the pieces you want.

tomstrummer

I use http://www.printwhatyoulike.com/ as a link and it helps me choose what I want to print. It works well but is a bit slow...

MartinDafoe

I use Firebug to delete parts of the web page that I don't want to print.

KVReads

This service looks good, but I've been using the readability bookmarklet lately for printing and reading web documents: [lab.arc90.com]

elightbo

I just copy and paste into my word processor. Hasn't failed me yet.

I'm tired of going green. I going plaid.

For a while I used the HP smart web printing thingie. It worked with Firefox. But it's not compatible with FF 3, so I can't use it anymore. It worked really well, too.

ribex

I agree with others. Bookmarklets seem to work fine. I have TinyRead and PrintWhatYouLike. Or use DownloadPDF and save the paper.

lhed

Awesome service. But the guy in the video skeeves me out just a little.

ShriSilenus

As mentioned, I use the Nuke Anything Advanced extension. Ever since they added the 'undo' capability, it's a great way to trim off the 'fat' of pages.

stainlessrat

@SwatLax: Oh wow. You just saved me SO much time developing prototypes. Ok, not a ton, but you made my life easier! Thanks!

stainlessrat

I'm amazed at how print preview doesn't work for print selection. Normally with web pages I end up printing to PDF first to check how it will look.

If there's big black boxes I'll draw a white rectangle over it in PDF xchange viewer.

-----------
BOOKMARKLET
-----------
Saw this, liked it, make the bookmarklet!

----
Code
----

javascript:void(window.open('[www.printfriendly.com]'+document.location.href));

Limvot

Even better than copy/paste:

Copy/Paste Special (Ctrl+Shift+V) - Unformatted text

I'll seriously never forget when someone first showed me the beauty of paste special.

Then change the font to whatever size fits your eyes, make the margins .25 all around, and presto chango - you've got your bathroom reader ready to go.

SwatLax

I use the FF add-on, Aardvark: [addons.mozilla.org] I'll have to give printwhatyoulike.com a try though!

PrintWhatYouLike.com is what I have used for a long time. It's fantastic!

ShibaniHaruhism

@joe.glass: I prefer argyle. But that's just me. ;)

I use Hartija CSS Print Framework http://code.google.com/p/hartija/

AndromedaArcas

I use printwhatyoulike.com with the Bookmarklet so there is no need for copy/paste
It allows you to choose the parts you want to print.
It works well but is a bit slow

giboit

@tomstrummer: Very nice. Thanks.

FinePrint is the best solution for this on Windows. Plus, you can scale pages (print from your program to a Ledger-size page, then print to Letter). Also, you can aggregate print jobs into a single job, reorder jobs or pages, delete pages, print 2 or more pages per physical page, and more.

I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't bought FinePrint yet. It's exactly the kind of headline-grabbing feature to stave off the yawns at Windows 7.

I'm even more surprised that GNOME and KDE don't provide this editable-print-preview functionality natively yet.

brianary

Hi this is Taylor from PrintFriendly. Thanks for the post! We also like PrintWhatYouLike.com, however wanted to to take a different approach by removing the navigation, sidebars, ads for people. It saves a little time and effort and for some people, that's nice. I agree with @atomicrabbit and @ShriSilenus, the voice is CREEPY... and what's really scary is it's my voice! Ok, for all you DIY folks out there, here's how you can make a video with a creepy voice effect. Record the video at 3:00 AM when everyone is sleeping so you have to whisper with the mic shoved in your mouth. Then jack up the volume in post-production so it can be heard. Presto... creepy voice :) Cheers!

AmoritaMontufar

@stainlessrat: Cool to know that someone else is going to get use out of this info!

One last tip: make the font, margin, and other format changes to the Word doc before you Paste Special. That saves you the step of highlighting all of the text in order to make your formatting changes.

SwatLax

I second the firefox plugin aardvark. It is much faster than the alternatives.

signalhuckster

@atomicrabbit: Noup you're not alone. I'm trying to figure out either if he is making love to his computer or just sleepy.

FellKnight

@[lifehacker.com]

clickable

For printing, this looks like it does a pretty good job.
It's not very different from PrintWhatYouLike, but it does look simpler and more straight forward.

However, I would like to recommend Readable App for reading.

Lot's of people print long documents because they can't stand reading them on their monitors. I know because I used to do the same thing.

At some point I became so annoyed by this problem that I made Readable. It's also been on LifeHacker.

Gabriel Coarna,
Readable App's Developer

357.gaby