Update: I just added the print css style to my blogger template, and it works just fine. Now Walt and others can print my blog in a much cleaner manner! Thanks to Bill Drew for some guidance on where to put the style tags, and to Walt for pointing Bill’s post out to me.
A few days ago, I commented on Walt Crawford’s post about the printability of blogs. Well, alot has happened in a few days! For starters, Walt left a good comment on my post – here’s what he had to say:
“I mostly print for #3–and, let’s face it, I’m just not as evolved as you are when it comes to computer use: The procedures you use leave me scratching my head. Besides that, I find that when I’m working on an essay or overview, contemplating the source material in print form, away from the computer, is frequently an important step. For me, not necessarily for you.”
Good point – people do things differently. One should definitely go with what works for him/her.
“Printing from the aggregator is OK if people provide full-text feeds (some don’t), although aggregators don’t do wonderful jobs either–but feeds with comments included along with full text are relatively rare, and sometimes that’s what I need.”
More good points. Aggregator printing is dandy IF there’s a full-text feed. Otherwise, you still have to visit the actual blog’s website. And the whole feeds-with-comments-and-fulltext thing – the only one I know of (if I’m thinking correctly) is Free Range Librarian. I like how her blog shows up in Bloglines – whenever someone leaves a comment, I get the updated post-with-comment. Very cool.
“I do use Bloglines email to get around printability problems sometimes…which is a pretty baroque way to get a simple listing!”
Emailing a blog post to yourself as a way to get around poor or no print options…
“Note that Bill Drew seems to have a simple fix for Blogger print problems. Inspired by that same essay. “
Wow! I’m going to give this one a shot. This is what I like about blogging – Walt posted thoughts, others commented, and POW! there’s now a solution (at least for blogger folks). Pretty fast, too.