Source: Mary-Lynn
Printing a site through your web browser might seem like the simplest thing in the world. However, some sites out there are that aren’t all that printer friendly. There are some ways to make printing through your web browser easier to accomplish as well as easier to decipher once printed out.
1. Preview the Web Page Beforehand
Some sites cause your printer to use up a lot more ink and paper than you think it will when you hit that ‘print’ button. Previewing the page you intend to print before you send it on through can help to avoid these problems. Look at your browser tool bar and click on the File menu, then click ‘Print Preview’. This will allow you to see how the page will look when printed. If you like the way it looks, close the preview window and print.
2. Fixing Margins
Some websites get very creative with the margins on their pages. These can be far too wide to print correctly on a piece of printer paper or too narrow to be able to read well. First, try resizing your browser window so that the margins of the text adjust to the width that you need – some sites allow this. If the site you want to print does not allow it, try setting your printer to print the page as a landscape so that the margins will fit onto the paper. Go back to that File menu again and click ‘Print,’ then click the ‘Properties’ button. The default setting is to print in portrait form. Change this to landscape and you should be good to go.
3. Removing Headers and Footers
Most sites have custom headers and footers on the printed versions of their pages. These can be useful, if you need the info about number of pages in the print job or the page’s url. However, if you don’t want these showing on your printouts, you can remove them easily. Go to the File menu in your browser’s tool bar again and click ‘Page Setup.’ Go to the headers and footers section and remove the characters or information that you don’t want to show in those fields, then click ‘OK.’
4. Printing in Grayscale Instead of Color
If the colors on a site are not absolutely necessary, you can save huge amounts of ink simply by opting to print it in grayscale. To do this, to go the File menu in your browser yet again and click ‘Print.’ Click ‘Properties’ and find a place where you can select grayscale or black and white printing. This won’t change the default on your printer, which is set to color, but it will allow you to print in grayscale this time. Click ‘OK’ and print as normal.
5. Printing from a Frame Website
Frame websites, as annoying as they can be, continue to be in quite wide use. Printing something from a site with frames can be highly frustrating, but it can be done without pulling your hair out. If you need to print everything on the site, go to your File menu once again and click ‘Print.’ In the area where it says ‘Print Frames,’ click the radio button for ‘As laid out on the screen,’ then click ‘OK’ and print it. If you want to print a single frame only, left click one time on the frame you need. In the ‘Print Frames’ section already mentioned, click the radio button for ‘The selected frame’ and click ‘OK’ and print. You can also print each frame on the page by itself by clicking the radio button for ‘Each frame separately’ and printing as mentioned above.
6. Printing a Selected Passage
If you find information that you want to print off of a website, you don’t have to print the entire page to do so. With your mouse, highlight the information that you want to print. Leaving it highlighted, go to that old File menu in your browser again and click ‘Print.’ In the dialog box, click ‘Selection,’ then print as usual. Alternately, you can simply copy and paste the text into a text processing program such as Microsoft Word or Open Office and print from there the way you normally do.
One of the printer cartridge and toner experts over at Cartridge Save, James is getting himself acquainted with HP Laserjet cartridges while juggling his blogging responsibilities.