printing

July 18, 2014

Printfriendly

iconPFLooking to print a website  (“greener”) without wasting paper and ink on all the unnecessary pages and formatting? Try this web-based tool called PrintFriendly. You can print almost any website by simply pasting the URL on the Printfriendly website, or email the page to yourself, or print to PDF as well.

PFicons

 

Also, add the tool as an extension to your Chrome browser to use as needed. And you can download the button code and add to your own website.  (find out more!)

TIP:  As suggested by the Tech Bits column in C&RL News June 2014 (brought to you by ACRL ULS Technology in University Libraries Committee) this tool  “…could be a powerful visual tool for librarians to compare website content and reliability during instruction” (- Jaki King)

February 21, 2012

Save Ink

Cutting back on printing is key, but using various fonts can save ink.

A  2010 study at University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, showed they saved $10,000 by switching  all default printing to Century Gothic (this blog post is set in this font face).  They say it uses 30% less than Arial.

This article explains others fonts to use to save ink mentioning a study by  Matt Robinson to determine ink usage of various typefonts. His study shows Garamond followed by Courier are the most economic.

The ecofont (the one with hole!) is even better and you can download the Ecofont Vera Sans regular for free if you register.

January 3, 2011

Think before you print

A new year and new resolutions. How about an easy one – less printing? A new green format called WWF that allows one to save in a pdf style format but allows NO printing.  Created by World Wildlife Fund, this free downloadable format for both PCs and Macs, allows you to save emails, messages, resumes, documents, etc. in this WWF format but those receiving the document will not be able to print it.  could be annoying at times but also a good way to change habits for yourself and others, with things do not need to be printed on paper.  Read more & download  the format here.
October 5, 2010

Print What You Like of a web page

PrintWhatYouLike is a free online editor that lets you format any web page for printing in seconds  saving money and the environment.  It helps you eliminate printing web pages full of ads, empty space and other junk you don’t want.  Enter a URL and you get a screen with the web page image and legend of options such as to show or hide the  background, images, and  margins; change the font size and style; and save as various format. The best part – on the page itself, you can choose different areas/pieces of the page (indicated by their red box that highlights as you mouse over it) and the  isolate, remove, widen, resize, save clip or select only.  View the demo for details.

August 3, 2009

All fonts are not equal

Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth in their work Measuring Type analyzed fonts at the same point size to see how much ink they really use, aka,  how economical they really are.  According to the article by inhabitat on their project, the conclusion “Use light, serif-based Garamond instead of bold and compact Impact.”


Also check out a recent post i did on ecofont – a free font that uses less ink by being holey!

June 16, 2009

EcoFont

Not only should we cut back on paper use in printing but ever thought about cutting back on ink? Try downloading this  free eco friendly font –  Ecofont –  developed by SPRANQ (from Utrecht, The Netherlands). The idea was how to create a font using less ink and how to much of a letter can be removed with it still being readable.  This font has empty circles in its letters and uses 20% less ink.  For normal 12pt printing it looks a little grayish but very readable; trying blowing it up and printing and you can see the circles in the letter but still readable! And thus the name spranq  “After Dutch holey cheese, there now is a Dutch font with holes as well.”

January 31, 2008

Green Printing

GreenPrint World – a new, free application  (for windows users) detects and highlights unwanted content before printing such as banner ads on a Web page, images that tends to spill over onto extra pages, etc. It also allows users to delete images they dont want to print, and create quick PDF files for easy printing.

GreenPrint World estimates regular users of this application will eliminate over 1400 pages a year and save $90! And it will spare 100 million trees from being chopped down and 300 million tons of greenhouse gases from polluting the atmosphere. 

Download the free application here.