Customize My NYT Online

December 18, 2004 7:07 AM

Lately, I am being driven mad - MAD, I tell you - by the poor use of screen real estate on standard online NYT story pages. I have begun wildly searching out the 'printer friendly' button, squinting through the thicket of blinking garbage and navigational chrome and the one-quarter or less of actual story, pausing only to note the advertiser name in my shitlist Moleskine.

Is there anyway to reconfigure the default links to redirect to the printer pages in-browser, so that my desparate seaches are ended, with the link being forwarded automagically?
posted by mwhybark to Computers & Internet (20 answers total)

I'm not sure if you can do what you are asking, but install Firefox + Adblock, and get a good blocklist. Browsing the web has become bliss!
posted by reverendX at 7:33 AM on December 18, 2004

i guess they like their advertisers as much as you like your Moleskine. maybe you should add to your shitlist "i am part of the problem"? or, in case you think this is irrelevant to your question - the reason we have so much advertising is because idiots like you think brands are important. so changing your own attitude would be a first step to a world with less of this crap for all of us.
posted by andrew cooke at 7:43 AM on December 18, 2004

Seems like you could make this happen with the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. I'm not sure how comfortable you are with the work you'd have to do for that. It might be easier to use a user-defined stylesheet or just turn off the NYT stylesheets and see how the page looks. There might also be a version of the site for handhelds that's a lot cleaner. I know ESPN has something like that.
posted by yerfatma at 7:45 AM on December 18, 2004

There are ads on nytimes.com? Seriously, take reverendX's advice about firefox. There are also decent blockers for i.e. And if you use Safari, there's the wonderful PithHelmet.
posted by birdherder at 7:51 AM on December 18, 2004

What do you use to block ads when you browse the internet? is another useful askme thread for adkilling.
posted by dabitch at 8:11 AM on December 18, 2004

I agree with the Firefox/Adblock recommendation. It's like browsing the web in 1997 all over again.
posted by waxpancake at 8:16 AM on December 18, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks for the helpful answer, andrew.

Way to devalue the AskMe brand! I'll be sure to have AdBusters add you to the roll of honor. Fight the power!

(makes note)

Actually, I don't block ads. Ads support the publication and I really don't have a beef with them. What I have a beef with is the way they crowd the content off the page.

I suppose I'm meta-asking for better UI implementations in general. Ah well, answer's no. Nothing to see here, move along.
posted by mwhybark at 8:31 AM on December 18, 2004

I thought you wanted to look at the printpage only as a little hint to NYT that they are overdoing it. A letter to the webmaster/editor might do a better job at alerting them to the fact that they are annoying loyal readers like yourself. Or not, but it's worth a shot.
posted by dabitch at 8:36 AM on December 18, 2004

You can do this with a rewriting rule in privoxy or the late, lamented Proxomitron. If you're using Apple's Safari browser, the Pith Helmet extension also has rewriting rules that will do this for you.

It helps if you know regular expressions, but you don't have to. People have solved this and you can probably cut and paste.
posted by majick at 8:39 AM on December 18, 2004

You could try the Print It! extension for FireFox. I never tried it myself, but it might work.

Also, while reviewing the links on the main page I noticed the text version of the site. It might make for easier printing.

As for the advertisements argument, I like blocking ads that distract from actual content and make page navigation difficult (much the same way I hate commercials breaking-up a perfectly good television show). That's why extensions like AdBlock are great, you can allow ads from certain sites, and block some from others. Also, I believe it still downloads the ads, it simply doesn't display them in the mark-up.
posted by purephase at 9:19 AM on December 18, 2004

I just whipped up a bookmarklet (self-link alert!) to get the printer-friendly version of any NYTimes page. All it does it is add "&pagewanted=print" to end end of the URL. To use it, add it to your bookmark/favorites bar and click it when you're on the page you want to print-ify.
posted by zsazsa at 10:55 AM on December 18, 2004

I second the adblocker-firefox solution.




i guess they like their advertisers as much as you like your Moleskine. maybe you should add to your shitlist "i am part of the problem"? or, in case you think this is irrelevant to your question - the reason we have so much advertising is because idiots like you think brands are important. so changing your own attitude would be a first step to a world with less of this crap for all of us.

Wow. Who has the attitude that really needs changing? And who is crapping on ask.me?
posted by Rumple at 11:45 AM on December 18, 2004

Response by poster: Wow! Lotsa usefulness, thanks, folks!
posted by mwhybark at 11:49 AM on December 18, 2004

rumple - it was a solution, just a longer term one. ever heard of teaching a man to fish?
i don't see any part of my attitude that needs changing, or anything that was inconsistent or wrong in that reply. and complaining about advertising while namechecking your own particular favourite "brand as cultural identity" strikes me as deeply clueless.
so care to explain what i did wrong in your eyes, or what the useful content was in your reply? or is "wow" as good an argument as you can string together?
posted by andrew cooke at 12:12 PM on December 18, 2004

I, for one, like andrew cooke's solution.
posted by grouse at 12:14 PM on December 18, 2004

I just wish the Times wouldn't impose a right margin when many people have more width that just gets left blank. Would also be nice, but I suppose interfere with ad sales, if articles weren't split over multiple pages.
posted by billsaysthis at 12:27 PM on December 18, 2004

andrew cooke - for starters, calling the poster an "idiot" was wrong. The useful content in my reply was to add a vote to the firefox/adblocker solution. Looks like the poster has found some good ideas in this thread, maybe even throwing away the Moleskine. I'll leave it up to them to further judge the utility of your solution.
posted by Rumple at 12:28 PM on December 18, 2004

i don't see any part of my attitude that needs changing, or anything that was inconsistent or wrong in that reply.

I find that self-absorbed assholes rarely do. Particularly the ones with a consistent record of unprovokedly attacking other members of this community.

and complaining about advertising while namechecking your own particular favourite "brand as cultural identity" strikes me as deeply clueless.

Or, y'know, parody.

For someone who admits to having emotional problems on their own userpage, perhaps you should follow the advice contained therein and Post to Your Own Weblog, Fuckwit.
posted by Danelope at 1:21 PM on December 18, 2004

andrew, I have to admit (not that it should matter) to being disheartened by your response. I agree with the principle of the thing, that brand is becoming this awful monster, little tiny religions people believe in (look at the Cult of Song Airlines in the recent Frontline on brand for an easy example), but you're not going to save any cultists by looking down your nose at them. I guess I felt let down because it seemed like you might be singularly able to recall a creative technical response to the problem. Instead the Moleskin thing set you off. Oh well. Not the end of the world, but let's all just call this one off and get back to the topic at hand, if that's cool with everyone.
posted by yerfatma at 2:11 PM on December 18, 2004

Oh, proxomitron is the best. Pith Helment for Safari is exactly like it, except with a whole lot more built in filters and better looks.

I remember making Dogpile's page into just a search box and making Dictionary pages just the definition.

Good times. And all done before google and learning regular expressions in perl.

I'm completely sure it can do what you'll want, but you'll have to learn a bit to do it.
posted by easyasy3k at 10:35 PM on December 18, 2004