Printer Un-Friendly

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to print it anymore.

For the love of cranberries, folks. I have a big problem with web sites that look fine and readable on the screen, but look like a train wreck when you print it out. It would be easier to overlook if it wasn't for the ease of setting up a printer friendly stylesheet.

Creating a stylesheet that's only used when printing saves toner/ink, paper, and a lot of frustration. How many times have you printed out a great article, or a solution to a problem, only to find that half the text is chopped off? That only half of the paper is used by content, and the rest is used up by ads and navigation links that are useless on a printed page? Setting styles in place to hide navigation and other web-only elements is a very easy way to make your page much more usable, and maybe even keep visitors from going elsewhere. Here's a simple way to use external stylesheets to do the trick:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="print.css" **media="print"** />

So please, if you have content that you can print, create a stylesheet for print media. It's easy, and adds a level of quality to your site that's very noticeable.

Tags: css

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