How To Create Printer-Friendly Web Pages
As web design technology goes further contemporary web pages created by experienced web developers are known to get more and more complex due to the amount of images, advertisements, links etc included in them. That is why sometimes it is hard for the visitor to view such web pages fast and without obstacles online. Moreover, apart from being crammed with visual content web pages may be somehow misrepresented in different monitors. And that is where the necessity to print the page occurs. There may be a lot of other reasons why users may need to print web pages - not only the distorted presentation but also the necessity to bring the printed material along may appear. In any case your task is to make your web pages printer-friendly so that any user may print and read them easily.
What implies printer-friendly web page? There are many suggestions concerning this issue as web developers make use of different methods to write the printer-friendly page. Some of them decide to remove the navigation and advertising, some include the text links and some leave only the title and body of the written content. But there are several tips which will come in handy in any case and will help you to create web pages which will be printer-friendly for sure. So take a look at the steps you need to take.
1. Change the colors
If your web page is multicolored, i.e contains colored background and fonts, you need to make the background white and the text black in order for your web page to be printer-friendly. This is the most winning combination for your pages content to be read easily on the paper, moreover, a lot of your site visitors make use of black-and-white printers so you will help them to use the ink economically.
2. Use proper font and font size
The most appropriate font for your printer-friendly web page is probably serif one as it is very easy to read both online and when moving to print. As for the size - if your web page is of the small font size, e.g. 11px or smaller, you need to increase it for printing. It depends but you better make your page font size not less than 12pt.
3. Highlight the links
The links you place within your web pages won’t be clickable on the paper so you need to highlight them for your printer-friendly page. The easiest way is just to underline all of the links in order for the viewer to identify them when he printers the web page.
4. Remove surplus pictures
If your page contains related images you need to limit them for the printed version. Remove all the pictures that are not so necessary and leave only those ones which are important, e.g. images which the article requires or brand logos.
5. Remove advertising and navigation
Advertisements placed within your site make it difficult to print the page so you better remove them taking into account that they will probably be of no use on the printed page and may only distract the visitor from the main content. The same thing concerns your website navigation - it is useful only when the visitor browses your pages but on the paper it will appear to be unnecessary. Removing it you will provide more space on the page for the very written content a user needs.
6. Add a by-line
The articles your website contain may not have a by-line but you should definitely include it for the printer-friendly version. This will allow the user to find out the necessary information about the author without rushing and opening your site again especially when there is no opportunity to do it at the moment.
7. Add the URL
Including the original URL of the printed article is a very important aspect. This allows your customers to follow the link in case of necessity and get additional information from your website. Moreover, this will help you to promote your web pages as well as the users will probably share the source of the article they have printed.
8. Add a copyright notice
Don’t forget to protect your writing as you are the sole owner of what you write on the web. So adding a copyright notification will protect your rights and avoid using your web page printed version as someone’s creation.
So these are the steps you should follow in order to create a printer-friendly web pages for your website and assure your customers of the quality of your services once again.