The Importance of print.css

  • Posted On: March 1st, 2007
  • Filed Under: Web Design

Bloggers... I'm begging you... create a print.css file.

Sure, it's important that your site look good on a computer screen but occasionally your visitors may need to print something. If your website doesn't print cleanly on an 8.5"x 11" sheet of paper then you're doing a disservice to your readers. Take a second and look at your site. Select a post and in your browser click File -> Print Preview and see what happens.

You're looking for three things. First, is there anything from your site that is getting cutoff? Second, how long is your sidebar in relation to your post's copy? And finally, are you forcing your users to print a lot of background images?

A Quick Tip for Getting Started

One quick and very dirty way to get your print.css file off the ground is to create a blank css file and cut and paste the entirety of your regular css file into it. From here you can tweak a few settings without giving up the majority of your theme's style and tone. In this post I'll share a few quick tips for tweaking this new css file to make your theme more printer friendly.
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NotePad++ as a Portable Notepad Replacement

  • Posted On: January 29th, 2007
  • Filed Under: Software

NotePad++ is a lightweight, open source, notepad replacement ideal for bloggers and novice web designers looking for a decent Notepad replacement.

There are two features that I really love about this program. First off you get tabbed document control. You can open several documents in one window and can even split the documents into tabbed view to compare multiple documents at once.

NotePad ++ Screenshot

NotePad++ also offers a color coding scheme which makes browsing blocks of code much easier. Once a document is saved NotePad++ can apply a color scheme based on that documents type. These color schemes recognize code blocks and sort them appropriately. What's nice about this is that you can instantly see when a code block hasn't been closed properly. You can also, at a glance, speed through blocks of code to see where things begin and end. Check out their screenshots for a better understanding of this.

For bloggers looking to get into template design this is a great program because it recognizes certain levels of context that can make learning html, css and even PHP much easier.