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Printing_Your_Website_the_Right_Way
| Printing Your Website the Right Way
There are so many techniques and methods available to create a
user friendly website. The first one is by using a server side
routine or print stylesheets. The print version may strip out
images and navigation that lose their meaning on the printed
page and may show the page in a single column using a dissimilar
font with a different size.
When there is no printable version or the printable version
includes ads or other settings, you can use stylesheets. With
CSS awareness plus some web development tools, you can easily
create your own formatted print versions. The tool you may need
involves Mozilla Firefox. If you don’t have it yet, you can
install Chris Pederick’s Web Developer’s Toolbar.
Various techniques are utilized in order to expose the grid of
the website, segregate the element containing the content you
want, use CSS to format the page with suitable font sizes,
widths, and margins, use CSS to selectively show and hide the
other parts of the page as you see fit and save the CSS to
create an immediate custom printable view.
To easily take an X-ray of the site, use the web developer’s
toolbar. After that, use the Outline Block Level Elements or
Outline Table Cells to outline the site’s grid then use View ID
and Class Details from the Miscellaneous menu.
To isolate the target, set the container and its descendants to
be visible, and then move to the top of the editing area and
hide everything. But before you do this, you can first change
its background color, format the texts, change fonts or its
border properties so that you can easily identify it. Use the
Boxes and Arrows to do this.
When you already achieved your desired look, save your user
stylesheet. In cases where you return from Print Preview and the
area is vanished, you have to reload to continue with
modifications. You can use Load to import your CSS file into the
editing area.
If you want to create some space, the difficulty lies on how to
distinguish between one div or table and another. To remedy
this, you can create a rule in the editing area to place margins
around the various containers which are dependent on the layout.
If you have difficulty in identifying any target on the page,
you can use the View Style Information from the Information
menu. Your cursor will turn into a crosshair. Stay close over
the elements in your page and the status bar will tell you where
in the DOM tree the element is placed.
The editing CSS feature of Chris’ tool doesn’t work in Mozilla
for the reason that its sidebar implementation is dissimilar
than Firefox. However, if you desire to use Mozilla, you can use
Firefox to edit and save the CSS and then use Add User Style
Sheet from the Miscellaneous menu to apply the styles you saved.
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