Often, websites that look beautiful on the screen print very poorly. Extra spacing, layout changes, and the presence of ads, sidebars, headers, and footers can add up to several wasted pages. PrintFriendly allows you to select which elements to print on a page, targeting only what you want to see.
Getting Started
There are two ways to use PrintFriendly for website pages – pasting the URL of a page in a box on PrintFriendly.com or installing a browser extension/add-on. If you use the tool often, it may be handy to install the extension to save the step of going to PrintFriendly.com each time.
For this example, I am entering a URL, but the editing process is the same with either method.
Remove Unwanted Items
After entering your page (or activating the extension of a page), a window appears with a simplified version of the page. As you hover over a section with your mouse, it highlights in yellow, and a trash can icon appears. If you do not want that section, click the trash icon to remove it.
Be precise and pay attention to what is highlighted when hovering, or you may remove more than you intend to. Thankfully, there is an undo button at the top if you need a section to reappear.
Some items you may want to remove include ads, sidebars, menus, images, decorative elements, and sections with too much spacing.
When all unwanted items have been removed, select the printer icon in the menu at the top left to print the edited page.
Bonus Options
Sometimes a page doesn’t need printing, but you still want to save it. Or, the page you are saving obscures the URLs of important links.
For either of these cases, you may prefer to save the page as a PDF. This version of the edited page retains clickable links. To convert to PDF, click the PDF icon in the top left menu, then download the file when prompted.
Want to share your edited page as a PDF? Use the email icon at the top left of the page.
Summary
Printing pages meant to be viewed on the web doesn’t need to be an exercise in wasting paper. Use PrintFriendly to edit web pages and save only the information you need.
