Tips On Printing Web Pages Modified 9-23-01

Many of my students and clients have found that printing the pages of this web site and making a notebook is helpful for quick reference. The problem is that printing the full page takes a lot of ink and paper space for the graphic at the top and the links on the side that lend nothing to the info.

A second problem is that much of the printing on the right side does not get printed. Here are the solutions to both problems:

1. In Internet Explorer, there is a little known choice that allows you to print only selected portions of a page. (Netscape, AOL, CompuServe, MSN users see below) If you highlight only the material you want to print, then choose Print and click "Selection" instead of "All", you only print the highlighted material. I printed my whole site last week and it took over 300 pages. Of course many are of interest only to me, but there are probably over 200 of general interest.

2. If a page is too wide to print on a standard 8-1/2 wide paper, the web pages do not wrap as does a text file in a wordprocessor. For wider pages, you need to print in Landscape format.

To do this, select File, Print. Then look for the Properties button beside the printer name and look through the dialog box for Portrait and Landscape. By default, all printers use Portrait format (8-1/2 wide x 11 long). Likewise all printers allow switching to Landscape (11 wide x 8-1/2 long). You will find this will print the entire page.

This setting will stay for the next page you print. If you want to go back to portrait, you must reset it manually. This setting only applies for the one program and only until you close the program. If you reopen a new session, the setting revert back to the default setting in the Control Panel.

If you find you do most of your printing in landscape, you can change the default setting in the Control Panel and it will apply to all printing in any Windows program.

Modified 9-8-01

For those of you using Netscape 4X, AOL versions 3 - 5, CompuServe, MSN or other browsers, this cannot be done directly from the browser. You can still do this by opening Internet Explorer (the blue "e") and going to the page you want to print and following the instructions above. To go to the page directly, use Copy and Paste to copy the URL from your browser to IE. Don't know how? Click Here to learn how to Copy and Paste.

For AOL 6.0 and Netscape 6 users this ability has been added. To print a selection follow these steps:

1. Open the window (web page) and maximize it. (Helps to see more at one time)
2. Drag the mouse over the area you want to print to highlight it.
3. Click File, Print. In Netscape the standard print dialog box comes up (see step 4)
In AOL, Click File, Print or the Print menu, then Print. In the AOL Print dialog box, choose the Options button in the lower right part of the print panel.
4. In the resulting Windows Print dialog box, click the Selection box, then OK.

Note: One other feature worth checking out in AOL is Print Central. It is available from the Print Menu or in the AOL Print dialog box before you print.