Collecting links for printing

In Improving Link Display for Print, Aaron Gustafson describes a really neat and unobtrusive JavaScript technique for collecting and displaying the URIs a document contains when it is printed.

Inserting a footnote for each URI is much better for readability than using CSS generated content to display the complete URI next to the link or quote that contains it. I’ll look into implementing this here in the near future.

Posted on September 29, 2005 in CSS, JavaScript, Quicklinks

Comments

  1. September 29, 2005 by Lachlan Hunt

    It would be nice if this script were made into an extension or Greasemonkey script, so that the user could print all pages like this, rather than relying on the author to do it. The only problem with doing it this way, is it would be difficult for the user script to differentiate between important content links and irrelevant site navigation links for every site.

  2. November 28, 2005 by Screen Printing

    Very good idea with the links for printing. This would also be perfect for a student writing a term paper. They could post it online and print out a copy for the teacher with footnotes. Great updating an old school technique with new technology.

  3. January 15, 2006 by Tom

    Couldn’t you just use CSS?

    @media print {
a:after {
content: ' ('attr(href)')';
}
}
  4. January 15, 2006 by Roger Johansson (Author comment)

    Tom: Yes, but that causes readability problems. The technique described in the article is a way to avoid that.

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