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New Print Function in Slaw

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You may notice that now, beneath each entry, there’s a link that invites you to “Print this post.” Clicking it will take you to a page containing a stripped down version of the relevant entry and a list of links referred to in that entry; if it’s what you want, the print button at the bottom of the page will send it on its way to your printer. I’d been meaning to install this for some time and was finally kicked into action by a kind email from a reader who pointed out how unsatisfactory the results of the browser print function were, given the shape of Slaw. I’m grateful for this reminder.

I was slow because I’m not much of a printer anymore. Those of you who don’t commit Slaw to paper may nonetheless find the new print button useful because it produces a distraction free version of a post, rather as your RSS reader might, and also because of the way it pulls links out of the post. You could, of course, save the print page as a simple text file if you want to retain a post for later reading offline, for example.

Comments

  1. Nick Holmes
    October 29th, 2007 at 5:39 am

    Simon,
    “how unsatisfactory the results of the browser print function were”
    This is because your template does not specify a css for print in the link tag.
    I suggest the simplest course to fix this is to change the tag to refer to media=”all”, then add another link tag for media=”print” pointing to a print css.
    The print css just needs to define formats for elements which are to differ. So to suppress the header and sidebar, just define as follows:
    #header { display: none; }
    #sidebar { display: none; }
    You can then redefine widths etc of the main elements to suit.

  2. Simon Fodden
    October 29th, 2007 at 7:29 am

    Thanks, Nick. I know. It’s just that I got lazy and distracted around the the time the print css was due to be done. I’ll get around to fixing up the styles at some point; in the meantime the plugin is a quick fix (I hope).

  3. Melanie Bueckert
    October 29th, 2007 at 10:33 am

    Thanks! The feature works great for printing posts, though it doesn’t seem to include the comments (i.e., when I click on the “comments” link in the print version, nothing happens).

  4. Kempton
    October 29th, 2007 at 2:26 pm

    Hi Simon,

    I have never complemented someone for a great print function before but I have to say your “print” works magic for me. I am sure once I know what is possible I will have suggestions for improvements. But the “print” does generate great looking output files (and on a Mac, I can easily save that as a PDF file if I wish) with all the links referenced printed out.

    Many thanks,
    Kempton

    P.S. And your ReCAPTCHA spam filter (with voice challenge) looks cool too. Thanks.