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.

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Posted at 02:23 |  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?

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Posted at 05:45 |  by Unknown