Printing web pages can be quite a headache sometimes. More often than not, half the page is taken up by advertisements, menu bars, empty space, and other information that a user just doesn’t want. You pretty much wind up wasting printer ink on a bunch of junk information.

One way to make printing more relevant to a web page is to use PrintWhatYouLike. The website helps you format web pages so that you can print exactly what you need. Not only does it make printing more efficient and cheap (because you don’t waste ink on junk info) but also it ensures you do your bit for the environment.

Using PrintWhatYouLike is extremely easy. Enter the url of the page you want to print in the box on the website. The web page then shows up with a formatting bar on the left-hand side. The bar has plenty of features, to optimize your printing experience.

The PrintWhatYouLike formatting bar has options that allow you to set the printing area for your web page. Then you can remove selected areas of the page, certain images, or even the page background. Finally, you can change the size of the text and the font itself, which is great for all those pages with hard-to-read text. As a bonus feature, you can combine more than one page while printing.

I tried out PrintWhatYouLike and came away impressed. It’s fast, easy to use and serves the purpose it advertises. Plus, it’s web-based so there’s no need to install an additional application. If you regularly print web pages, I recommend using the PrintWhatYouLike bookmarklet.

What do you think of this website? In your opinion, what’s the most efficient way to print a web page without unnecessary elements? Do you know of other similar sites? Let me know in the comments.