Printer-friendly web pages

A user may want to print out a web page if it contains a lot of text or important information that the user wants to save.

A page with a light text on a dark background color may look nice on a screen, but not when it is printed out on paper. Furthermore, the page may contain a lot of menu bars and gimmicks that just take up space on the paper to no use. Some web designers want to help their users getting a nice printout without disturbing colors and menus. There are various ways to solve this problem:

Making a link to a printer-friendly version of the same page

This method is easy to understand for the user. Unfortunately, the link to a printer-friendly version rarely fits into the existing menu system: The menu contains topics, not technical options. Putting in a link that doesn't fit into this context disturbs the user. If you place the link elsewhere it will either be too glaring and disturbing, or it will be ignored.
 

Making a button on the page

This is equally disturbing. The user is likely to prefer the usual printing method, not knowing that this button gives a better result.
 

Using style sheets to specify different styles for different media

This method works automatically whenever the user prints a page. A minor disadvantage is that the user doesn't expect the page to look differently when printed out.

This page uses the latter method. Try to print out this page, and you will see that the colors and menus disappear! (You can make things disappear by applying the style display:none)

This page was last modified 2008-Dec-08