"Print This Article" tool

Hey, Gang –

Does anyone know where I could find a plugin or action that would allow readers of my web magazine to print articles from the site?

I’m looking for a way to add a little icon to a web page that says “Print This” and allows users to print the article without the extraneous ads and whatnot.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jamie


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There’s a couple of different ways to do this.

If your Web page is coming out of a Content Management System (CMS)
then it’s really simple to make a separate template for printing
purposes that drops all extra elements and only returns the content.
For a great example of this, look at any article on the New York Times
Web site.

If you only have one view of any given page (static code, not dynamic)
then you need to make a separate print-only stylesheet. First, you’ll
want to make a new class style that you can apply to anything you want
to appear when printing (or do this the other way around if there are
more things you want to keep than hide – make a screen-only style and
apply it to the things you only ever want to see on the screen). Next,
make a new stylesheet using a text editor or CSSEdit or another
dedicated CSS tool. In this sheet, set everything inside the PageDiv
to hide:

#PageDiv * { display: none; }

Then selectively turn back on things that have your print style
applied to them:

#PageDiv div.print { display:block; }

If you’re working the other way around, you can simply skip the first
step and make the stylesheet one line long:

#PageDiv div.screen { display: none; }

Finally, you will need to attach the stylesheet to your page along
with a media attribute. The External Stylesheet Action (at
ActionsForge) will allow you to specify the print media type when you
use it to upload and link your newly made print stylesheet.

Now, when you print the page, that stylesheet will be used along with
any other stylesheet attached to the page to format the site.

What this will not do is alter the overall structure of your site to
make things flow into a better layout for printing. In order for that
to work, your structural CSS would have to be in another stylesheet,
and that sheet would have to have been specified as applying to
“screen” only. That’s not currently possible within Freeway.

Walter

On May 22, 2009, at 11:54 AM, Jamie Turner wrote:

Hey, Gang –

Does anyone know where I could find a plugin or action that would
allow readers of my web magazine to print articles from the site?

I’m looking for a way to add a little icon to a web page that says
“Print This” and allows users to print the article without the
extraneous ads and whatnot.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jamie


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You could make a print friendly page, sans ads and add the javascript link

window.print()


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Excellent. Thanks, everyone!


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This is just what I’m after…

I’m a little confused at implementing it though.

I have a div on my page called ‘report’ how would I ‘turn it on’ to allow it to print?

Thanks


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