I was hoping to capture it in such a way that I can take a digital file to FedEx Kinko’s, print it out, and have it appear close to the original online article. (I want to share this with my Family Physician back home!!)
Unfortunately, this seems to be MUCH more difficult than you’d think?!
I am on a MacBook Pro, and I have the latest version of Snag-It for Mac.
While Snag-It does a good job of creating an image of the entire web page and saving it as a .png, it really doesn’t offer me a way to get WYSIWYG as far as printing goes…
If the NY Times actually used Good Compliant Web-Design this might not be a problem, but better luck with ending World-Hunger before the NY Times writes sensible web pages?!
In addition to being a really good article content-wise, I think this web page looks really “sexy” and just wish there was a way I could share it in a paper form with others…
What more do you want, apart from a snapshot of the page? That sounds like a pretty perfect way to get an exact rendering of what’s on the screen.
I suppose an alternative would be to copy the source code, save it onto your hard drive, put in the relevant basehref, change the stylesheet links so that it opens the screen sheet for print as well as screen, and print it from there … but that does seem like an awful lot of work when you’ve already got an image that shows you exactly what you want to see.
If the NY Times actually used Good Compliant Web-Design this might not be a problem, but better luck with ending World-Hunger before the NY Times writes sensible web pages?!
Having a separate print stylesheet is good practice, and the NY Times should be commended for the sensible approach they have taken here, in providing a basic article-only print stylesheet that ignores all the other rubbish that only makes sense on-screen. I’m not sure what your complaint is, but the number of people who want to print an exact facsimile replica of a web page is absolutely minute in comparison to the number of people who want to print the content, filling the page, and without all the menus and other cruft.[/font]
The problem is that if a web page is in essence 10 pages long, you get one SINGLE humongous image saved as .png file.
You can’t print that out because the image is continuous while the original article had logical breaks for the pages.
It’s the whole concept of pagination, right?
What Snag-It needs to do is act like Adobe Acrobat and take the original 10-page HTML file and convert so you still have one .png image file, but with logical page breaks like Adobe Acrobat tries to do. Instead, the capture document just looks like a continuous photograph.
(Image what would happen if you went to print out a digital image that was 24 inches by 36 inches onto 8 1/2" by 11" paper…)
See above.
Did you look at the article online?
I want the graphs and charts and page layout on the printed form because those other items are NOT cruft!!!
It’s not like I have my doctor’s e-mail address, and yet I’d like him to see the article as I see it online. (Non-geek people tend to be more motivated to read something if it looks professionally formatted and has graphics too…)
If you go to all of the trouble creating a beautiful page online, then the smart thing to do is make it so people can print it out or capture it in a way (e.g. PDF) that can be transferred and printed out later without losing the look-and-feel…
What the NY Times did was create a “pretty page” that may look okay in browsers, but if you go onto your iPhone or Tablet or print it out you’re screwed!!!
Ok, I’ll give you the point about the graphs, they should have been included in the print version, I wasn’t looking that closely. But decorative photos don’t need to be. And how can you say that the screen version has logical page breaks when it’s a continuous flow? Any decent image software should be able to print a gigantic.png over several pages. Or you could just write out the link or a bit.ly version of it and give that to your doctor so that he can read it online.
My bigger point is that in an ideal world you could transition between printed form and online form and not lose anything from the original online web page. (Might be a generational thing, but not everyone is online and not every situation - like this one - allows for sharing of a URL.)
I meant that Adobe Acrobat can take continuous web content and break it up it paper pages without chopping off the text. (Although the more I look at PDF’s I make on my Mac, that isn’t really true…)
Like what?
If I take a continuous 10-age .png on my thumbdrive to FedEx Kinko and go to print it out I bet their copy/print machine will choke!!
And in the rare instance it would print, I suspect things get chopped off between pages - like a sentence being split in half?!
Have you ever tried printing a photo that is bigger than one page and seen what happens? (Same concept here.)
You’re sounding like a geek now…
Hate to break it too you, but there are LOTS of people that would scoff at that including my doctor - who while brilliant has no computer savvy.
I was trying to make this as easy as possible so maybe my doctor actually reads the article. (The harder I make it, the less likely that will happen.)
Not you fault, but I just can’t believe there isn’t an easy solution to what I want to do.
Just goes to show you that the print and paper and digital worlds are very disconnected…
You could save the original complete page, HTML and everything else. Then create your own “right-sized” pages using only what and as much as you wanted.
I think a reason the NYT doesn’t have a better way to print the online stuff is because they already have a print version available for those that prefer paper. i.e. you rip out the page(s) you want and send those to your parties of interest.
I find it strange when I use my Mac to PDF the article that it doesn’t capture anything beyond the text. (When I have a PC and a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional, it sure seemed like you pretty much got a carbon copy in your PDF of what the original web page looked like…)
I guess my Mac PDF capabilities are PDF’ing the “print” version of the web page which must not include images. (Again, a stupid web design!!)
I don’t really think “laziness and incompetence” is a fair assessment. As I said before, the graphs aren’t images, they’re generated content - which looks to be considerably more complex to set up than simple images. I don’t know why they’ve chosen to do it this way, but they must have a good reason for it.
[edit]The number of people who don’t want to buy a printed paper, but do want to print an entire article, with graphics, must be miniscule. You want to do it today, but how often is this an issue for you? Is it realistic to expect them to cater for such a small number? They are, after all, running a business.
Of course, they might be able to afford it, if only folk didn’t go to such lengths to avoid paying a subscription… ;)[/edit]
Then take a look at the source code and tell me if any self-respecting SitePoint member would ever code their own website that way…
So I missed that part. Can you explain more what they are doing, because that is a new concept to me. Do you mean they are using something like PHP to dynamically create the charts and graphs?
In this digital world, I suppose so.
I, personally, often read some great article online and want to print it off and share it with other people to help “enlighten” them!
Am I the “exception”? Sure.
But when my website is done, I hope to offer the same feature that I am complaining about in this thread as a courtesy to my readers.
And as I see it, such a feature is actually somewhat self-serving… You want to print out articles from my website - for free - and share them with other people? Awesome!!
Not one to hold a grudge or a distant memory, I see?!
Maybe if I get my website done and start making some $$ of my own I can finally splurge and get some subscriptions…
