22Mar

Save Ink by Cleaning Up Web Pages Before Printing Them

Isn't it a pain that when you print a web page you often have to include a lot of stuff — like advertising — that you don't want?

Even the printable version of Mapquest driving directions (which are otherwise rather good) includes a large full-color ad. Thanks a lot for wasting my ink.

Fortunately, there's a way to remove these annoying elements from a web page before you print it out.

I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but my preferred method uses the excellent Aardvark Firefox extension and the Remove It Permanently Firefox extension.

Start Aardvark (right click and press "Y").
Mouse over the offending object on the page and press "K" to 'kill' it.
Press "Q" to quit Aardvark and print out your nice clean page.

A handy way to save both ink and paper.

Posted on: March 22, 2007 | 5 Comments

5 Comments Posted

Thanks... i've always wondered if there was a way to do this.

My daughter is the worst.

1. Posted by Chad on March 22, 2007

I usually just select what I need and print it separately but I guess this a far simpler method

2. Posted by Jermayn Parker on March 22, 2007

Been doing that for ages...

I just can't quite get a finger on why blogs, online-magazines, etc. won't go an extra mile for a proper print version of the page or even format a CSS for print.

3. Posted by Kevinn on March 23, 2007

Cool! Here's something that goes even a step beyond that:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
It's an extension for Firefox that will automagically filter out ads before they are placed on the page.

4. Posted by Sarah on April 24, 2007

thanks for this i have downloaded the firefox extention and saving on ink great although the website should have printable versions of their pages to avoid this

5. Posted by the website designer on June 04, 2007