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June 16, 2009 2:58 PM

Can I force a "print view" on sites that do not have such a feature?

I want to print some blog posts and was wondering if there is a script or something for my browser that would allow me to get a "Print View" of the post, even if that feature is not built into the blog itself. News sites allow you to do this through an actual URL that takes you to a printable version of the article (like this), but most other websites do not provide this feature. It would be much easier to just hit a button on my browser than copy/paste into a word processor. Any suggestions?

posted by ageispolis to computers & internet (8 comments total)

You could try the Readability bookmarklet.
posted by crickets at 3:04 PM on June 16

If you're using Firefox you can go to
View>PageStyle>No Style
This'll get rid of any styles and give you a nice black & white page
You can take it one step further and then highlight the text you want to print and select "print selected text" from the print menu

Pretty positive you can do the exact same thing in any other browser as well
posted by Redmond Cooper at 3:06 PM on June 16

I came in to recommend readability. But crickets beat me there.
posted by Netzapper at 5:47 PM on June 16

The answer to your prayers:

http://www.printfriendly.com/
posted by AsRuinsAreToRome at 6:23 PM on June 16

www.printwhatyoulike.com
posted by Joleta at 6:50 PM on June 16

You want to view a website as it will look when it's printed? File> Print Preview.

Or if you want a button.
posted by devnull at 12:41 AM on June 17

Seconding printwhatyoulike.com - the 'Do it for me' button works surprisingly well but you can fiddle around yourself to get it just the way you want it.
posted by southof40 at 1:42 AM on June 17

Make sure you do a print preview before assuming a site won't print nicely. I've never built a site with separate 'printer-friendly' pages, but all sites I build have print style sheets that hide the navigation etc. to produce similar results.
posted by malevolent at 9:53 AM on June 17