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Hack The Web, Remove Elements Before Printing In Firefox

Back in 2007 I looked at two Firefox add-ons to prepare websites before printing them. Preparing in this case meant to remove unnecessary elements like advertisement, chat boxes or sidebar links from the page to save printer ink and get only the relevant information on a printed page (see best way to print websites).

At least one of the extensions mentioned in the guide, Aardvark, has not been updated in recent times. The last update dates back to February 2010 which more or less means that the extension is no longer actively developed. Some users have noticed incompatibilities with recent versions of the Firefox web browser.

That’s the main reason that Hack The Web was created. The Firefox add-on offers a similar functionality as Aardvark. Firefox users can use the extension to remove page elements from the active website.

Whenever you want to print a page you can right-click on the page and select to start Hack the Web.

start hack the web

You will notice then that you page elements are highlighted with a red border when you move the mouse cursor over them.

print websites

If you click the left mouse button the element will be removed. You can alternative press the r key to do the same. If you have deleted a page element by accident you can get it back by pressing u for undo. Other keys of interest are w for making the element wider, n for narrower, d for removing the width limit of the element, l for turning the background color to white, b for black on white text and I for removing everything but the selected element. The q key ends the editing mode.

Please note that all page elements will reappear if you reload the page or click on a link to open another page.

The extension offers several advanced commands that include adding global JavaScript variables, pasting a removed element in another location on the page or killing the selected element permanently which only works if the Remove it Permanently extension is installed.

Once you are done editing you can print the remaining elements of the web page on the printer. Removing elements saves printer ink and maybe even paper.

Firefox users can download and install the Hack The Web extension from the official Firefox Add-on repository.

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Related Articles:

Print Friendly Removes Uneccessary Elements Before Printing
Remove Elements Permanently From A Website
Print Edit, Edit Pages Before Printing In Firefox
Hide Firefox Interface Elements With Replacement
How To Remove Elements From Google Chrome’s New Tab Page



About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.

Author: , Monday October 24, 2011 -
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Responses so far:

  1. Efthimios says:

    ScrapBook is another great add-on of this type.

  2. B. Moore says:

    There is an AWESOME bookmarklet called The Printliminator made by Chris Coyier and Devon Govett. over at css-tricks.com

    http://css-tricks.com/examples/ThePrintliminator/

    I highly recommend using The Printliminator instead of installing another add-on that adds to the bloat of the rest of the Firefox add-ons you have already installed.

  3. Masoud Sh. says:

    Very useful, Thanks a lot.

  4. Swapnil says:

    There an awesome thing called MediaPlus, a tool to take control over web media content.

    MediaPlus can also delete images, HTML5 videos, Flash videos and other things like Flash ads and games.
    And if you want something to be smaller, you can even resize the media content like videos and images.
    So it also allows to prepare webpages for printing by removing any videos and pictures and even resizing them.

    MediaPlus homepage-

    http://nparashuram.com/projects/flashresizer.html

    And there are MediaPlus extensions for Firefox, Chrome and Opera browsers.

  5. Picsou says:

    Hello all,

    There is too Print Edit Extension not to bad.
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit/

    Picsou

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