How to Efficiently Print From an Internet Browser Window

Using a printer to keep a physical copy of pages you are browsing can be frustrating, and a waste of both paper and ink. Not only does the advertising print, but also the formatting does not work properly, and printed sheets with one or two images or lines on them are both common and annoying.

Selecting print from a browser’s File menu causes the browser to send everything showing in the window to the printer. To avoid the headache, plan ahead before clicking “print.”

Option 1. Look for a specific-to-print version of the site. Many web pages include a print version. Google maps, for example, allows you to bring up another window where you can customize your print options, including how many and what size maps to add to your printed directions. Many news or text-based sites offer a downloadable PDF or Word formatted document for printing purposes. These versions will save you time and materials cost.

Option 2. If there is no specific print version on the site decide how much you want to print. If you only want to print a small section or block of text, highlight what you want and right-click it, then select “copy”. Open a new text document and right click again, this time selecting “paste”. You can now format the text as you wish.

Option 3. If all you want to print is an image, you can usually right click and copy the image, and then paste it into a photo manipulation software program or a simple “paint” style program to print it from there.

Option 4. If the website you wish to print from is print based, or the amount of text is too great to copy and paste into a new text document, you will have to print from the browser, which means you may get more graphic elements than you want. You can control the extent of this by right clicking on a frame (a section of a page) and selecting “open this frame in a new window”. You can then print only what is showing from the browser’s File menu without as much waste.

Websites were written to be read by browsers, not printers, and the two do not interact well yet, but by following these instructions, you can save yourself a hassle.