Saturday, September 11, 2010

How to design printer friendly web page

Today almost the whole world has gone tech-savvy. Whatever information we are looking for can be easily got from internet. That is why so many websites are there. But it does not mean the need or the use of printed information are vanished. We still have little bit ease in using printed information especially applicable for elderly people and children. In other words we should say this is why printer friendly web page is available.

Now we may say what the uses of printer friendly web page are and how to make the webpage really printable? What are the reasons web pages becomes printer unfriendly? First see why we need printable version of the web pages.

  • Use of animation and other dynamic effects cause trouble for reading and users then feel that there may be a printable version.
  • Long and informative articles or texts becomes little strenuous to read on the digital media (monitor, e-book reader).
  • It is not always possible to carry the reading devices with us. If we may have a printer friendly web page and take print, we can carry it anywhere.

Now the question comes how to make the web pages printer friendly? And it is fact that with a little care of the things I have tried to put down here will help in making any web page a printer friendly web page. Let us find few things:

  • First to increase the readability of the webpage and also to ready printer friendly web page the font size should be 12pt and font color is preferably black on white background. And the links has to be underlined to show them as links.
  • Necessarily the animation effects have to be used less or there has to be option to print pages without animation. Otherwise the print impression becomes illegible.
  • Web pages include advertisements. People taking print of any page for gathering information would like to avoid advertisements. So keep option to print the pages without advertisements. This makes user happy and web pages printer friendly web page.
  • To make a web page worthy to be printed, the height, width and margin has to be set or given option to adjust.
  • To prepare printer friendly web page is to use CSS media types, and in coding use of HTML 4.01 and above versions. These two design tools works fine to make pages printable. Avoid using too much table base coding and never use frames. It also helps in preparing print version of pages.

So now it is crystal clear that with little and easy steps, a web page can be made printer friendly. Whatever the case may be, the fundamental thing is to keep the web pages clean and worth reading. Never thrust the pages with too many animation effects or advertisement. Remember, if you first irritate the users with a clumsy look, it is going to cost you in the loose of users.

If you want to know how to keep the design intact in look and make every webpage printer friendly web page, hire website designer who knows how to design web pages both printer friendly and stunning in looks! At least as a freelance graphic designer, I always design website layouts or templates printer friendly. You may have a look at my portfolio and you could understand how templates are great in look! And yet those can be made very much printer friendly.

2 comments:

angelosam123 said...

Sir,
Thanks for sharing nice information your tips are really helpful. It is important to get website printer friendly.

Professional Website Design

Wildnet Technologies said...

Would you be ok if I repost this on my site? I just want to give credit where it is due. Have a good one!
Website Design UK