A Better Way To Print This Blog
Jason Schultz pointed me to this cool blog widget this morning.
It’s called the ECO-SAFE merit badge. But I call it my blog printing widget. From it, you can email this page, email a pdf of this page, or download a pdf of this page. It’s goal is to reduce the amount of paper that is wasted printing blogs.
But as anyone who has printed blog pages knows, they often don’t print right. So this will help you make a copy of this blog’s front page however you choose. Let’s hope it does reduce paper waste too.
It’s now on my left rail in the tools section, right below search, and right above subscribe via email.
Comments (Archived):
Ahhh, the irony….. Bloglines served an ad for Kinko’s under this post 🙂
This would work really well as a browser plug in.
Fred,That widget doesn’t print any better than the standard page— paper and ink being wasted left and right. Plus, the experience doesn’t look a whole lot better than the original “for the web” content.After HP bought us, we looked at this problem from exactly this perspective— make is less wasteful— and then decided to add convenience and esthetics to it as well. Go check out what we’re doing for TechCrunch for a good example of the former, or see what the print button does to my blog to see an example of the esthetics.Now granted, we seem to have caught the big company disease of being poor at communicating this to the rest of the world, but you can get started here with either approach.Waste from printing is a huge deal which is not lost of folks at HP.
I tend to agree Antonio. I do like that you can export a post to PDF for storing locally, sure beats downloading all the HTML and related images to have the page sit offline (if you aren’t using Google Reader and Gears). But for printing, I tested the app on a couple of posts and there was no discernible benefit if your goal was to in fact get the blog to a piece of paper, say to hand out in a meeting. This post we are in came out to be six pages, just as if I can printed it directly from the browser.
Updated – Renders like a work of art now, very nice!
COOL! I’ve added it to Intrvenus De Milo…
Hmm, the ECO-SAFE merit badge is serious overkill, as is the HP Tabblo solution.Using separate Cascading Style Sheets for screen display and printing fixes the problem seamlessly for readers. CSS is free, standard, and supported. No badges, emailing, or PDFs required.Let me know if you need a little CSS consulting 🙂
This is really cool, thanks for sharingWe can talk endlessly about css and overkilling this and that but at the end of the day who else is distilling down tech in a way that anyone with a blog or website can use? Delivering it to them? Helping them?Why use Kiva? You have a bank account and phone line – access to air travel, so why use Kiva? Same underlining principles.This is the first time I’ve seen this type of web 2.0 technology used in a (measurable) way that can change the world.
Hey if the eco badge is the easiest solution for someone, great. I just wanted to point out a method that 1) doesn’t require yet another sidebar flash widget, 2) doesn’t require a PDF download, 3) doesn’t ask for users’ email addresses, and 4) isn’t free advertising for a site that frankly looks sketchy.BTW: The PDF generated by that widget actually uses MORE paper than Fred’s current suboptimal print CSS because the PDF shows all the sidebar stuff that you don’t need in a printout.
I heard Al Gore started this?
Thanks, Fred. I added the widget on The Green Skeptic and will try it out.
Excellent product, Fred. Thanks for pointing it out. I just swiped a copy for [chrisbrogan.com], so I can offer the same service. I appreciate your sharing it with us, and welcome back.
“If you want there to be more trees in the world, use more paper.”Let’s ban books, and newspapers, and cardboard. Haranguing people to not print an email is a only great way to feel superior without actually having an impact. Let’s ban ‘smug’ instead.
This is great, but there is a communication problem here. The eco safe site says it provides printing alternatives. Well, thats much different than the debate about css standards and the like.By the way it looks to be updated with better rendering capabilities. I looked at both Fred’s blog and Chris’s blog and they look much better than they did. Maybe it was the old machine I was using. Cheers
Yes you are right in your opinion.
I think it will reduce paper waste and we can also print blog from front end.
Your blog is informative.