Comments on: Leaving Money on the Table: Printable Versions of Articles

By: omnicity

omnicity — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:28:32 +0000

I hate having to wait for a Print-Friendly page to load, especially when it turns out to be full of ads anyway – just use a print stylesheet unless you have a multi-page article – which I hate as well.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 08:40:37 +0000

Really interesting point of view, thank you very much for the tip!

By: dgibson

dgibson — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 22:06:02 +0000

Checking the referrer is evil. Lots of “security suites” may alter them without users knowing (like it’s some privacy protecting feature), so you are affecting legit users by using this method.

Print CSS is the way to go, IMO. “Printer-friendly version” is so 7 years ago.

By: cwsteam.com

cwsteam.com — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 19:07:50 +0000

Very valid point, and it does make sense.

By: LinhGB

LinhGB — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 03:07:30 +0000

That stylesheet switching seems like a more elegant solution. I’ve used it before for other kinds of stylesheet switches but never thought of using it for print. It’s basically a print preview as well, which is good from an usability point of view, I suppose.

By: SRTech

SRTech — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 01:45:17 +0000

If people are too used to the “Print-friendly Version” link, then put a Print icon on your page which is a JS link to activate the print dialog of the browser.

Or better yet, some site I saw used a javascript style switcher to switch to the print style sheet so the visitor could tell that they would be getting a print style.

By: Etnu

Etnu — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 01:29:40 +0000

If people are too used to the “Print-friendly Version” link, then put a Print icon on your page which is a JS link to activate the print dialog of the browser.

Exactly.

By: LinhGB

LinhGB — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:47:45 +0000

If people are too used to the “Print-friendly Version” link, then put a Print icon on your page which is a JS link to activate the print dialog of the browser.

By: kmsiever

kmsiever — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:29:28 +0000

Another ditto on the print stylesheets. I’m surprised a site like SitePoint is still promoting an outdated practise as developing multiple sites.

By: Kilroy

Kilroy — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 18:04:18 +0000

Print stylesheets definitely are the solution here. It's true that users will expect a website to look the same when printed, but I've already thought of a solution for that problem. See print stylesheets for everyone.