Comments on Printing the Web

Florian Höllwarth — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:56 GMT

One could also use standard citation rules for printed articles (ie endnotes) as in the following example:

—-
It exists, in fact, an evolving need for such tools, as Somebody [1] has pointed out in his recent TechNews column [2]. There are also some useful Newsgroups Threads [3] discussing the matter thoroughly.

[1] http://somebody.org
[2] http://technews.org/~somebody/tools
[3] http://groups.google.com/groups?q=super+duper+tool+demand…

Jacky Kwok — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:56 GMT

I think one thing printable version is better than CSS is you can print “multi-page” articles on one page. The CSS method can do that only if you are actually including all the content in every page and hidden some of them on screen and display all of them on print. But this will make the loading time longer.

Andrew — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:56 GMT

Printable versions also are often sans-ads and banners, and are almost always on one continuous page. If I’m sending someone an URL, I’ll always try to send the printable version one.

BTW, lots more on why computers won’t replace paper is in the excellent book “The Social Life of Information.”

Chris McEvoy — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:56 GMT

CSS and Printable Versions

I often use the printable version of an article for the version that I view on screen. I do this because I find that the printable version can be more readable than the screen version.

But since people have started to use the ‘better’ CSS method for providing a printable version it has become more difficult to do this.

Many of the recommendations you have made for the printable versions should also be considered for the ‘viewable’ version as well.

I wonder how many other ‘printable version lovers’ are out there?