Just a quick update folks - I've created a media="print" CSS file that creates printer friendly versions of all SEOmoz's pages. You should now be able to print out the stuff on our site without any major graphical issues. Printed pages won't look perfect (there's a lot of spacing issues), but it's still a huge improvement. I removed the header, footer, logo, and secondary navigation. I also made some modifications to the printer CSS that affect the Page Strength Tool so you can print out reports. The reports for the Keyword Difficulty tool are printable as well.
Also, I added a show/hide comments button that toggles the display of comments in a blog entry. This is very useful if you want to print out an entry but you don't want the comments to go with it.
I think setting up printer friendly pages for a BLOG is overkill... people can just select the text to print and hit print in their browser's file menu and select "print selection"... A confirmation page on a store site that has your buyer info and order info to be in printer friendly format is a different story... But kudos on going the extra mile anyways...
Matt, I probably shouldn't push this (and if you don't make any changes, this feature is still great) but...it would be great if there was a "print this post" link at the very top of the blog post.
Now that I'm going through old posts to print them out, some posts are so lengthy, you have to scroll down a while to get to the comments link (and I've scrolled too fast past it a few times) to get to the comments page, where you hide comments, then print.
Also, no matter what percent I scale the page to, it prints at the same size, about 12 or 13 point, which is bigger than I need. Since I'll be going through reams of paper and draining the ink in my laser printer printing out SEOmoz's posts, it would be better if I could shrink the point size.
Thanks, Matt, and the SEOmoz team! Have a great weekend.
Risa
Risa - I changed the print stylesheet so you should hopefully be able to resize the font when you print now.
Matt, this is great and just in time for Rebecca's extensive transcription of Matt's videos. You guys were so prolific in the last few days with really great blog entries, I was hoping you would make this blog printer friendly soon.
One thing - It took last night and this morning to figure out that there is no "print this article" button, but that the user has to click on comments > no comments > and print in the browser to print.
Thanks so much. You have vastly increased my learning potential.
All the best to you folks at SEOmoz. You're a great bunch.
Risa
Thanks for the hard work and the long hours. You seem to be the first one in and the last to leave every day. My hero!
Wow... Amazing stuff, Matt. That should make a big difference for a lot of visitors. Thanks!