How to Print Blog Posts

While most news sites offer printer-ready versions of articles, many blogs do not offer a printer-ready version of each posting. In order to print a post, you've got to print the entire page including all the ads, decorative formatting, etc. That's a waste of paper, ink, and toxic laser printer toner.

You could simply cut and paste the text of the post into Word or Notepad and print that, or you could clean up the page using a handy extension for the Firefox browser called Aardvark.

Aardvark allows you to selectively remove elements of a page for printing. Aardvark alters the web page as it exists in your browser (in memory). It doesn't alter the page on the web server from where it is delivered. It just alters what you are looking at it, and is temporary.

Perhaps you'd like to print the blog's banner and the post with nothing else? It's easily done with Aardvark. Here's how to get started with Aardvark:

1. You must have the Firefox browser installed on your computer. Using Firefox, download the Aardvark extension here. You'll need to restart your browser before the extension is fully installed.

2. You can start Aardvark by simply right-clicking on the web page and selecting "Start Aardvark" from the context menu.

3. Now move around the page. Do you see how Aardvark puts a red outline around all the elements on the page? With Aardvark you can clean up a page for printing by removing an element from view, or isolating an element so that only that single element is displayed on a page.

4. Using Aardvark highlight any undesirable element and type 'r' to remove it. To isolate an element type 'i'. Remove unwanted elements until you've got a clean page for printing.

5. If you screw things up just reload the page and start over. You can also type 'h' to see Aardvark's help menu.