Print What You Like Optimizes Printing Jobs
Print What You Like is a free online service and bookmarklet that provides you with functionality to edit Internet websites before you print them. This is useful as it allows you to remove elements on a page that you don't want printed, and to save printer ink and paper in the process.
Every now and then we look back at services that we have reviewed before. Print What You Like was reviewed by us in 2008. It is an online service that enables you to optimize printing jobs before they are send to the printer.
It is limited to optimizing printouts of websites, and offers controls to remove elements from those websites. The advantage of this is that you can reduce the website so that only the content that needs to be printed is printed. Everything else is not, which may save printer ink and paper.
The service works by pointing it to an url on the Internet. The website will be loaded by Print What You Like with controls to manage elements on the website in a left sidebar. If you use the bookmarklet, simply click on it instead when the page you want to print is active in the browser.
Print What You Like
The mouse cursor highlights elements on the website automatically when you hover it over them. These elements can then be manipulated using the tools of the sidebar.
It is for instance possible to remove elements from the website, change the text font and size, fit elements to the width of the page or resize elements.
Removing elements is the most straightforward option. Print What You Like deletes the element from the page so that it won't be printed.
Other options may help improve the readability of the printout, for instance the option to change the font type or size. Options to display or remove images, margins or background images are also available on the page.
Once you have selected an element on the page a toolbar is displayed next to it that provides you with options to remove it, resize it, widen it or isolate it on the page.
Print What You Like offers an automatic option as well which works well on some websites but not on all. This option in theory removes all unnecessary elements from the website.
The service is also offering a bookmarklet that sends urls directly to it making the process more user friendly. Alternatives to Print What You like are The Printliminator bookmarklet, Print Friendly or Green Print.
Update: You may sign in to an account on the Print What You Like website. The two benefits of doing so is that you may use so-called change sets which may be applied to other pages of the same domain, and that you may combine multiple pages into a single document.
