21 No, I'm not kidding...

Lyle: re: “While many of these options aren’t ‘simple’ for the masses, they are much, much simpler than the approach outlined in the article.”

I get the sense from your comment (and other people’s comments) that this may not have been clear enough in the article: this was never intended to be a method for “the masses”/end-users printing, it is aimed directly at web developers. These web developers most likely have Firefox installed and already have a working knowledge of CSS – enough to make this technique work. After all, we are users too, and why shouldn’t we use the tools we have to make our end-user experience better?

re: “Why in the world would someone want to go to all this trouble just to print a web page “better”?”

The first time I tried to do this, it was because an article I wanted to print was 7 pages long, mostly filled with items that were irrelevant to the article – images, ads, site navigation, and other related items. There wasn’t a print friendly version, so I ended up taking it into my own hands and used the tools I had at my disposal. When I was done, I had an article that printed in two pages and only contained what I wanted on it. That’s why I started doing it elsewhere as well…

re: “Even the most technically advanced web developers wouldn’t want to use this approach on a regular basis”

Agreed. The first time I used this technique, it took me about 20 minutes to get the article I wanted to print into a form with which I was happy. Any that I have done recently have taken less than 5 minutes, and I save them for later so that I don’t have to use the approach on a regular basis.

Now, if I had claimed that this was a way to bring better print versions to the all end users, well then, yes, I would have been kidding… ;)

posted at 01:15 pm on May 24, 2004 by Derek Featherstone

22 Here's what I do

I just add a class called “noprint” to elements that I don’t want to have printed. Create a stylesheet where media=“print”, create font sizes, colors, weight, etc for the text and add:

.noprint {display: none;}

and since class=“noprint” has no entry in the media=“screen” stylesheet, it has no effect onscreen.

posted at 08:09 am on May 25, 2004 by Julian Rickards

23 w/o Opera

Excellent article, I’m glad to see that people are extending the use of Mozilla’s products, that’s what they are made for.

posted at 11:46 am on May 25, 2004 by 1beb

24 IE6 Shell

For what it’s worth I use IE6 and have no problem applying my own stylesheet.

Actually, I cheat, I use a free ‘shell’ for IE called MyIE2 that extends (and fixes) it tremendously. Tabbed browsing, filtering, mouse gestures, load Gecko engine, etc. It also offers it’s own plugin architecture and among “Show Blocks”, “Toggle Tables”, and “Rulers” is “My Style”; a one-button stylesheet substitution.

I make most use of “My Style” to ‘correct’ otherwise difficult to read sites. Tiny-white-text-on-a-black-background? No more! Too many fancy effects applied to the content, so it’s more akin to a ransom note then a coherent series of paragraphs? Fixed! And yes, after restyling, ‘bout everything is suitable for printing.

http://myie2.com/
http://www.kogeneracija.co.yu/myie2/plugins.html

posted at 11:49 am on May 25, 2004 by Michael Maggard

25 Interesting, but ...

I like the idea of this, but am not sure I can quite spend the time creating custom style sheets for each site I print from, especially given how often sites change structure. I do quite like the idea, in principle, of a custom print style sheet though – something I have not yet added to my version of Opera …

posted at 06:15 am on May 26, 2004 by ILoveJackDaniels

26 That's the way

This is the way I use Firefox posibility’s very often. To everyone: try it and you’ll never choose another way. While I say this, maybe this isn’t the best option. Try it, compare it, en use it if it’s in your opinion the best method.

posted at 05:05 pm on May 26, 2004 by Xyppie

27 MyIE2

MyIE2 rocks doesn’t it? I used it for a whole year, but had to uninstall it after a virus snafu.

Of course, if you like MyIE2 you’ll LOVE Opera 7.23. I’m in love with this browser.

posted at 05:07 pm on May 26, 2004 by Dante

28 dev tools incompatible withi firefox on os X

Did I miss this? Is it me or are the dev tools not compatible with Firefox under os X? Firefox ‘unexpectidly quits’ when I try to install the dev tools?

posted at 08:55 am on May 27, 2004 by david

29 re: dev tools incompatible withi firefox on os X

Firefox 0.8 on Mac OS X crashes for any extension installation – this is one case where a nightly might be better. See The Burning Edge [http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/]

posted at 07:01 am on May 28, 2004 by Chris Neale

30 the best way

to deal with the less time we’ll have ;)

posted at 01:14 pm on May 28, 2004 by The Lizzzard