In association with the Foundation for Environmental Research (FER), I’m happy to announce the availability of the SmartPrint add-on for Firefox.
SmartPrint has a simple remit, namely to save paper when printing web pages. Ever had those print jobs where the last page is just the page footer, or worse, some blank space. Well, through a built-in content analyser, we try to eliminate this unnecessary content. The software can also reduce document margins if chosen. You can see a running total of how many pages you saved, and how many saved in total by all users.
While it does a decent job on most sites, it is by no means perfect. This is where you come in. I’d love to hear your ideas on what features could be added to make it smarter. Even better, look at the source and pick holes in it, or make patches!
Hacking Mozilla print code from chrome was, lets say, interesting. Having to override the PrintUtils object seemed like the best way to get control, but maybe there is a better way to do it? I thought I read a few months ago something by ROC about printing improvements for Firefox 3, but I must have been dreaming because I can’t find it anywhere!
Oh, and please leave a review on the AMO install page, it will help enable it to be moved out of the sandbox.
Great job, I’ve wanted something like this since forever!
i’d lighten up the “revolutionize” part of the webpage – with that aim the user can only be disappointed.
Two printing items are listed here:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/Product_Requirements_Document
Neither of which are assigned to anyone yet.
- Simplify the print preview dialog
- Printed pages should break without breaking lines
Three print items have already been push out of Firefox 3:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/FirefoxNext/ProductRequirements
Excellent idea. However, could the interaction with print preview be improved? At the moment, SmartPrint kicks in after you’ve previewed the doc, so you don’t get to see the effect it will have – people may actually waste paper printing documents again because of this. It might even be nice to have the SmartPrint on/off as a toggle on the print preview window, though I’ve no idea if thats possible.
I think the post of ROC you are referring to is “Units Patch Landed” :
As I took a look myself in print code some month ago, I must say you are really brave…
Nothing has really changed for years, bugs listed in the comments on http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/qa/archives/2005/12/printing_bugs_in_firefox_1.html still exist today…
About your extension, I didn’t test it yet (I don’t have an account on AMO), so I don’t know how you’re dealing with it, but would something like adblock “filter tabs over div” for easy and persistent deletion be possible ?
Also, searching for a link to a printable version of the page would be nice.
This sounds like a truly innovative extension. Will happily watch it’s progress. Who knows, it’d be good to see these kind of things rolled into the mainline Firefox.
Good luck.
How about using a print.css file for some aspects such as blocking elements or widening skinny columns of text. This would show up in the print preview.
How about using a print.css file (with media=”print”) for some aspects such as blocking elements or stretching skinny text columns to fill the page width. This would also show up in the Print Preview.