HUBERHOME

I've been rather busy lately and haven't had the chance to post anything new. If you want to take a look at what stories I'm reading, look up, and see what I have dugg. While I have a few minutes I'm going to rant and rave about printing web pages.

Currently I'm working o­n the next version of WiltonIowa.org with a brand new community section. The community news portion of the site will be semi-AJAX powered. I know its kind of overrated but why not. I hope to have it o­n the production server by the end of March, stay tuned for updates.

Right now I am working o­n a printable version of the articles. Printable versions of anything pose a challenge as there are a lot of things you need to make sure are right. I'm going to cover a few of them right now.

-- Make sure it looks good o­n paper, I know this may sound obvious but hey. (Head o­n over to WiltonIowa.org and click print preview in your web browser, it doesn't even look the same, see what I mean.)
-- Should you change all of your links into something else? When someone prints a page with links o­n it what do they get?

BAD:
Normal View -- Some Link Here
Print View -- Some Link Here

GOOD:
Normal View -- Some Link Here
Print View -- Some Link Here[1]

[1] http://www.site_url.tld/some_link_here.html

Now when the user prints the article they will know what the links really are, and not just the underlined words "Some Link Here".

-- Should we include our sites logo? I think this o­ne is more of a personal choice than a requirement, but helpful never the less.
-- If your site has ads should you include them? NO! It looks bad and wastes paper, have a heart folks, kill the ads o­n the printable pages.
-- Make sure to include the author, article title, date published, and original url of the article.

If you have any feedback or suggestions I would love to hear them.

Beau