Printer friendly?

by Allen B. Downey
July 2004

Why is the web friendly to printers and hostile to everyone else? I was just reading an article at Fortune.com -- at least, I was trying to find the article carefully hidden among a thicket of frames, ads, navigation bars, unnecessary graphics, and general visual clutter. Despite the distraction of a FLASHING, FLASHING, FLASHING ad, I thought the article was interesting enough to print.

I quickly located the icon that looks like a toaster, and pressed the link that says "Print". Of course, it doesn't actually print (or, for that matter, make toast). What it does is load the "printer-friendly version" of the page. What a relief! What a pleasure! My blood pressure dropped ten mmHg in seconds.

I was looking at a simple, neat page design that was comfortable to read. The article appeared prominently in the middle of the page, black text on a white background with a reasonable column width. This, of course, is the page I should have been reading in the first place.