Printing information from web pages has always been a hassle. You find a web page with some information you want to print out so you click on the printer icon in your browser. Instead of the page or two that you expected to come out of the printer, you get 14 pages of complete randomness with your information sprinkled in. 12 pages go in the trash, your wallet gets a little lighter from the paper and toner that just went down the drain, and a few trees scream somewhere off in the distance. If you are like me, you avoid printing from the web so you can escape this hassle and waste. That was, until the introduction of PrintWhatYouLike.com!
PrintWhatYouLike.com was created by two developers who shared our frustrations with printing from the web and decided to do something about it. The PrintWhatYouLike tool comes in several forms (listed below) and provides users the ability to choose what elements of a web page they want to print before the information is transmitted to their printer. Print a single paragraph, an article, an image or several pages of information. It is entirely up to you. This truly amazing service is provided to you for FREE, so there is no reason not to start using it today.
For those of you who don’t want to print at all, or simply want to archive information found on the web in a different way, PrintWhatYouLike also offers the ability to save the pages you find as a PDF. Just use one of the options below to activate the PrintWhatYouLike feature and then choose Save as > PDF instead of Print. Save the file anywhere you want and access it later on. This is a great feature for those of us who don’t want to shell out several hundred dollars for a PDF creation software.
The Many Forms of PrintWhatYouLike
Every user has different ideas of how a tool should be used, so the folks at PrintWhatYouLike gave us some options on how and where we can implement their service.
Bookmarklet
Link: http://www.printwhatyoulike.com/bookmarklet
The bookmarklet is a simple way to integrate the PrintWhatYouLike feature into your browser without any sort of installation. Simply visit the link above and follow the instructions to drag some text to your bookmarks/favorites area in your browser. The next time you want to print something, simply click on the bookmark and the PrintWhatYouLike editor will appear around the page you are on.
The Bookmarklet Looks Like a Bookmark but Functions Like a Print Button
Firefox Add-on
Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9290
This add-on provides a more integrated option (for Firefox users). Visit the link above and install the add-on**. It is listed as “experimental” right now, but I have been using it for months myself. Replace the standard “print” icon in your browser with the PrintWhatYouLike button. This will help you remember to use this great feature when the time comes.
** After installing this add-on, you will need to restart Firefox and then take one additional step to get the icon to show up in your browser. Right click in the menu area (somewhere near help) and choose Customize. Scroll down and look for the PrintWhatYouLike icon (like the one at the top of this article) and drag it into your menu bar, wherever you want it.
Customize Your Firefox Menu Bar to Add the PrintWhatYouLike Button
Look for Our Pre-Configured Print Button
For regular readers of the JumpstartMyPC.com blog or anyone who wants to print out today’s article for later use, you can now use the green Print button located at the top of our articles. This button has been configured to print only our article and images, without all the menu options and sidebar information. Push print and send the information to your printer without any hassle or selection. We’ve done the work for you.
The Print Button is Now Part of Every One of Our Articles
Customer Service is King
On a side-note, I would like to point out that the PrintWhatYouLike.com team is as fantastic as their product. I ran into some trouble when creating the Print button for our articles and received A+ support from Jonathan, who is actually one of the creators of this product. This top-notch customer service, in addition to a great product, means I won’t even think about trying a competitor’s product. It is a shame that other companies don’t understand the importance of communicating with and helping their clients.
 |
Tags: Add-on, bookmark, bookmarklet, environment, Firefox, green, ink, papaer, PDF, print, printer, PrintWhatYouLike
