I've seen it all over the place! But I haven't got a printer connected to my 'puta so I've had no need to click on them. However, just through curisoity I clicked on one once (can't remember where) and I thought, well OK, that doesn't look amazingly impressive!
So, my question guys (and gals) is:
What CAN be included on a page that is 'printer-friendly' and what CAN'T ???
Is there a recognised format for doing this, is there an 'easy' way to do it?
General comments along these lines are also welcome,
Tar very much
Rich
1) Eliminate navigation bars, irrelevant links, irrelevant graphics, and some or all ads. (By "irrelevant", I mean not related to the content you are going to print.)
2) Ideal, though probably not trivial: convert links to footnotes with URLs listed.
3) Be sure width of content won't exceed typical print width.
4) Check font size settings for printed readability.
5) Get rid of any animations, etc. that won't render properly on a printer.
6) Consider adding an ad relevant to content or to printing. One site I visit has "Printing sponsored by HP".
I'm sure there are other things that could be done, perhaps some others will chime in.
3) Be sure width of content won't exceed typical print width. -- What IS the typical print width??
just about all of my pages are using Verdana (I think it's by far the easiest font to read, Tahoma is OK too) and so Im guessing that should print out fine on peep's printers. Font sizes? Most of my pages use 'normal' txt sizes, i.e. no large or small txt. I think it's size 10.
Im using CSS to display my pages, would it be best for me to use CSS to display the printer friendly pages? Considering my site is going to viewed majority (about 98%) by version 4 browsers (it's basically on an intranet....dont ask...long story)
Further comments welcomed......
There is growing support among browsers to allow you to specify different external .css files by media type... media type 'screen' or 'print' (can't think of any other media types you'd need to have).
But of course, that's too simple and easy to be universally supported at the moment. ;) I'd stick with plain vanilla HTML on the print page... or have a PDF version of the page if you want the printed file to look fancy.
E.g., some browsers would print this very page where the white text on the dark blue background in the bar above would end up being white-on-white. (You can fix this by selecting 'print black text' in Netscape but don't count on your visitors to be that clever.)
Ergo, printer-friendly pages use only dark (or better yet, black) text on a white background.
One stat I haven't seen is what percent of PCs are set up with Acrobat reader. It's really a PC thing, not a user thing. As long as someone has installed Acrobat, even an unskilled user will be able to see the PDF file just by clicking on the link.
