Web Design & Development Guide

Printer friendly

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Printer friendly is a term used on the Internet to describe a version of a web page formatted for printing. Normally, web pages include information and navigation content that is only useful while browsing the website. Printer friendly pages are designed to fit on an 8.5"x11" or A4 sheet (see paper sizes) and include only the content of the page, along with source information.

Printer friendly pages are usually accessed through a link on the standard page.

Wikipedia has a link to printer friendly versions of articles in the toolbox menu to the left.

Designing printer-friendly pages with CSS

Web page designers can use CSS2 media types to create one set of styles for display on a computer screen, and another for printing. For example, navigation areas might be set as display:none in the print stylesheet to remove them from the printed output, and sans-serif fonts replaced by serif fonts for ease of reading. This technique eliminates the need for a separate printer-friendly page to be maintained.

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

External links

• CSS Design: Going to Print
• How to Design a Printer-Friendly Version of Your Page
• "Printer friendly" pages using CSS - tutorial with example code
• "Antair Printer Friendly" - A utility which allows you to print any web page in a printer-friendly fashion even if the website doesn't have a printer friendly link

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