Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Think about content

As shown in the earlier example, CSS allows you to hide and reveal page elements, which means you have an opportunity not only to change the style of your web page for print, but also to tailor the content to be appropriate to the medium. Chances are, people just want the content of the page for later reading or filing. To save on ink, consider hiding such elements as navigation, search boxes, decorative mastheads, and so on. Whether you show ads may be more of a marketing mandate than a design decision, but in general, they should be left out, too.

You may also want to include information on the print version that does not show up in the browser. In the instance that the printout is passed along to a friend, or rediscovered in a file months later, it may be useful to include the URL of the page. It may include a marketing message or other call to action.

Upgrade Your Images

Page content isn’t the only thing that can be hidden and revealed with CSS print styles. A similar technique may be used to serve an appropriately low-resolution image for the screen and a high-resolution image that will look sharper when it is printed. This technique is introduced by Ross Howard in his article “High-Resolution Image Printing” in A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/hiresprinting).