Print Friendly for Chrome optimizes Web pages for printing

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, printing Web pages is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get.

Well, okay, if you preview the pages first, you'll have some idea—but there's a good chance you won't like what you're gonna get. That's because most Web sites are packed with ads, banners, graphics, and other clutter that don't always translate well to the printed page. If nothing else, you can end up with lots of extraneous pages, which wastes both ink and paper.

Google Chrome extension Print Friendly & PDF lets you print smarter. Specifically, it strips out the ads and other clutter, formats the page for optimal printing, then gives you the option of removing individual elements you might not want. Oh, and true to its name, it lets you bypass paper altogether and print those pages as nicely formatted PDFs instead.

I was going to use PC World as an example, but it turns out we already give you a pretty junk-free printout. So click over to this Gizmodo page instead (Ctrl-click the link to open it in a new tab), then click Chrome's Print option (Ctrl-P). After Print Friendly & PDF

See that preview? It's kind of a mess, right? You've got unnecessary links to other stories, huge swaths of empty space, text shoehorned into a narrow column, and, at the bottom, nearly two pages' worth of comments and thumbnails.

But when you click the Print Friendly icon in your Chrome toolbar, you get a preview like the one shown here. It's in color. It lets you mouse over and delete any paragraph of text you don't want. Text spans the full width of the page, and can be adjusted in size. You can remove images. And you can create a PDF and/or e-mail the pages.

In short, it's Web-page printing the way it should be. Print Friendly & PDF will save you time, paper, and ink, and on those merits alone, it's a must-have addition to Chrome.

No comments

Posted at 02:23 |  by Unknown

Black Menu for Chrome puts all your Google services a click away

If you rely heavily on Google services, as so many small-business users do these days, you're probably familiar with the black toolbar that spans the top of various Google services. It provides quick and convenient access to apps like Search, Gmail, Calendar, and so on.

Ah, but what happens when you're viewing a non-Google site? No toolbar, that's what.

Black Menu for Chrome puts all Google services just a click away. Once installed, this extension adds a button to your browser that reveals an attractive drop-down menu for all Google's best stuff: Search, Google+, Translate, Maps, Gmail, Calendar, and the like.

Even better, when you mouse over any of these items, you get an interactive window for using them. For example, mouse over Search and you've got a Google Search field ready for your terms. Mouse over Gmail and you'll see your inbox, where you can read and respond to messages, compose new ones, and even access your search filters.

Calendar shows a month view alongside a list of upcoming events, and your scheduled tasks below that.

If that action window proves too small, you can click any item in the menu to open a full instance in a new tab.

At the bottom of the Black Menu, the More option reveals a full, scroll-able list of Google services, everything from AdSense to YouTube, with more obscure stuff like Consumer Surveys and Postini in between. For some reason, however, nothing happened when I clicked anything inside the More menu.

That glitch aside, Black Menu is an incredibly handy addition to Chrome, and far better than Google's own "black menu." It may not have a major impact on your productivity, but I suspect it'll have a minor one.

As always, if you've found any great productivity-boosting extensions, tell me about them in the comments.

No comments

Posted at 07:09 |  by Unknown

Add custom news and alerts to new tabs in Google Chrome

If you're a Google Chrome user (it remains my browser of choice), you already know how to reduce tab clutter with OneTab and add a clock and weather station to new tabs.
But if you really want to amp up Chrome's tab acumen, install OneFeed. It turns new tabs (that is, those you open by clicking the new-tab button or pressing Ctrl-T) into a personalized portal, a page stocked with news feeds, e-mail notifications, social-network updates, and more.

Indeed, OneFeed goes beyond Chrome's default new-tab options, which consist of thumbnails steering you to your most-visited sites or, if you scroll to the next "page," links to Chrome apps.

Once installed, you still get the most-visited sites thumbnails, but with the option of dragging them together to create folders (similar to how you do on an iOS device). And there's already a folder of Chrome apps, which saves you have to flip pages to access them.

But it's on the next page that OneFeed becomes a news reader, turning the latest updates from your favorite sites into an attractive, scrolling page of story thumbnails. You can, of course, edit and add sources, either by searching for them or pasting in an RSS feed (which is how I added PC World, ahem: http://www.pcworld.com/index.rss).

OneFeed also integrates with various social networks and Web services: Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Twitter, for example. Once you've approved one or more of them, you'll be able to get updates and notifications within that reader page, just by clicking the Social button.

This thing is really slick. On my system it was surprisingly quick to load (given all the information it's fetching), and I liked both the look and organization of new tabs. OneFeed may well earn a permanent place in my Chrome home. Your thoughts?

No comments

Posted at 05:45 |  by Unknown

Why Internet Explorer 11 is the right browser for business

Today, Microsoft released a Developer Preview version of IE 11 for Windows 7. Newer doesn’t always equal better, but IE 11 has some power under the hood that business users will benefit from.

To some extent, a browser is a browser. They all render and display content from the Web. However, since IE 8 Microsoft has invested significant effort and resources to push the envelope and expand the browser's capabilities. In a world where business is increasingly done online and in the cloud, it makes sense to have a browser that can deliver rich content and interactivity.

The Internet Explorer 11 Developer Preview for Windows 7 is very similar in scope and function to its Windows 8.1 sibling. Microsoft has tweaked performance, improved support for emerging Web standards, and expanded the ability to deliver an immersive experience from within the browser.

In IE 11, JavaScript runs 50 percent faster than in Chrome. It has improved support for HTML 5 features like drag and drop that will allow cloud-based tools like Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Office Web Apps to work more intuitively. IE 11 also supports WebGL for delivering smooth, 3D graphics over the Web.

A blog post from Microsoft explains some of the benefits of IE 11: “IE11 is the first browser to natively decode JPG images in real-time on the GPU, so pages load faster and use less memory, reducing power consumption and improving battery life. IE11 is also the first browser to render text on the GPU. Text and images are the heart of the Web, and accelerated text and JPG performance impacts nearly every page you see.”

More and more business is done through a Web browser. The fact is, for many business users and consumers, the Web browser is by far the single most-used application on the PC.

As I said at the beginning, a browser is a browser in most scenarios. Some support protocols or formats that others don’t, but as long as you’re using the latest version of each they’re all very similar. There’s always one that can claim to be the fastest, but we’re generally talking a millisecond here or there, and that torch is frequently passed among the major browsers.

There’s a new Web, though—Web 3.0. Web 1.0 was about simply displaying static HTML pages. Web 2.0 introduced interactivity, user-generated content, and Web applications. Now, we’re entering the Web 3.0 phase, the “intelligent Web” era of ubiquitous connectivity, data mining, and artificial intelligence.

The new Web requires new Web tools, and new Web tools need a browser capable of rendering and displaying the content. Microsoft is leading the way with Internet Explorer. You can check out Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7 by downloading and installing the Developer Preview.

No comments

Posted at 03:20 |  by Unknown