Print What You Like

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New Look for the PrintWhatYouLike Toolbar

20 Comments April 15th, 2010 by Cassie

Since we designed the PrintWhatYouLike toolbar, it is simple and easy for us to use. However, when we asked our parents to try it out, it was a whole different story… At first they tried clicking on the Print button, thinking it would magically format the page for them, but they were disappointed to find out that it only printed the page as is. It went from bad to worse as we watched them struggle to figure out how to use the different options for editing the page. My mom only wanted to print part of a web page, but she had trouble selecting exactly what she wanted to print. She had no clue that the ‘More’ and ‘Less’ options could change the size of the selection.

We decided to redesign the toolbar so that anyone can use it, even your parents or grandparents! We reduced a lot of the confusion by removing the options from the toolbar that only apply to selected elements. Instead, a menu pops up next to the selected element with the options for editing the selection. This simplified the options available on the toolbar.

A few more changes to how things work:

  1. The ‘Apply Change Set’ dropdown menu will only appear when there is a change set available to apply to the page.
  2. We removed the ‘Save Change Set’ button. To a save change set, click on ‘Save As’, and select ‘Change Set’.

We think PrintWhatYouLike is much easier to use now, so try it out! Let us know what you think of the new toolbar, and send us your stories of showing your parents or grandparents how to use PrintWhatYouLike!

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20 Comments Add your own

  1. dora says:

    pdf saving is not working : (

  2. jen says:

    the changes are terrible. this used to be one of my favorite tools, and now nothing works as expected. i select sections of the web page to remove, and then there’s no option to actually remove them! the pop-up menu that you say appears by the selected item actually seems to be partially hidden behind the left-hand toolbar.

    • Cassie says:

      @jen I’m sorry to hear that the redesigned toolbar is not working for you. This is not how the new toolbar is supposed to function. What browser are you using? What web page are you trying to print?

  3. colin says:

    Am not convinced this is an improvement. Less intuitive. No print button assumed I had to remove the side bar and chose print from the file menu but then if it isn’t quite what I want I cannot go back and make changes but have to start again. This is very bad. Later found that I didn’t have to remove side bar. Very unintuitive. Reinstate the print button.

    Also, just for interest some items appear in the page but do not print out. I think this might be to do with them being part of a css rather than the page itself, e.g. try to print the words telegraph.co.uk at the top of the page http://tinyurl.com/y6lol24

    It doesn’t work for me (firefox 3.6.2 OSX)

  4. Kay says:

    yes, can we bring back the old toolbar?

    the new one is really terrible … i cannot do what I used to do easily

    – on a webpage/forum, select only portions of text and remove some pictures, then print to my printer

    where is the print button? why it there confusion? it was very clear what it does. I thought something with my computer at first and very sad to learn about these changes, I had been using it for months since featured on a TV programme!!

  5. markw says:

    wow, i have to agree with a lot of you….i’m on a mac and had a hell of a time finding a web clipper where i could just make a simple formatted clipping of a web page and name it what i want and save it as a pdf… pwyl was my savior … for about a week…
    it’s not better now trust me… you need the isolate button to get rid of all the peripheral web junk and you need a better pdf saver that allows naming and saving where you want it. is a real mess now
    relative to before…just being honest…

    hope you revert back

  6. sbwhiteman says:

    I agree with all the previous comments. This used to be an absolutely indispensable site. Now it doesn’t work at all as expected. Unless you decide to revert to the previous toolbar, I’m going to have to find an alternative.

    Please, please, please go back to the way it used to be.

    (I’ve used the new version using IE8 and Chrome.)

  7. Kay says:

    can we have both possibilities if you still like to keep those people who prefer the new design (I don’t know who they are!! )

    I am on firefox and use to use it every morning to print

  8. markw says:

    I tried some more to get something! out of the changed product..maybe find some part that could get me a portion of what we had before…nada…I’d be interested in hearing someone explain how to take a newspaper article, highlight the desired body of text, etc. and get only the meat of the article in a nice format without all the web fluff. I used to highlight the web clip desired, hit isolate, which would get rid of the periphery fluff, and print to pdf on my mac…so simple. I thought I had died and gone up there somewhere due to the lack of simple mac web clippers… and now its also gone up there somewhere..

    jk… really though it’s now not only not simple to use… I don’t
    even think it works at all now…anyway just my 2 cents
    you had a terrific product there…

  9. Kay says:

    thanks for bringing the print button back, but can we not need to hold ctrl key to select multiple frames? one hand operation is a lot easier for people right? I don’t understand why anyone would like to hold an additional key
    cheers!

    • Cassie says:

      Other people complained about the new way of selecting multiple elements, so we reverted it back to the old way of selecting elements. You no longer need to hold down the Ctrl button to select multiple elements.

      • Kay says:

        thank you Cassie!
        I’m very glad you are listening out there!

        I am happy with the way it works now!
        cheers!

  10. sbwhiteman says:

    Working well now – thanks!

  11. impressed! says:

    Hi,
    After using the resize option I cant resume working.
    How do I stop resizing?
    other the that, so far – wonderfull!!!

  12. MikeL says:

    I have no complaints with your new toolbar. It works fine for me. But your blog posting is downright rude – not say offensive.

    You say you “decided to redesign the toolbar so that anyone can use it, even your parents or grandparents”. You seem to be implying that my parents or grandparent are dimwits. Or are you simply saying that everyone of my parents’ generationor older is stupid? Either way, it’s not very polite.

    How would you like it if your folks announced that they were trying to explain some difficult concept in a way that “even our kids would understand it.”

  13. lenni says:

    My change sets aren’t saving to my dashboard even though PWYL says they’re saved.

    Also, on Print Preview there seems to be a large left margin, causing the right edge of the page to be cut off unless I shrink the page significantly.

    Like the new toolbar.

    Using Firefox 3.6.3.

  14. Duayne says:

    MikeL — easy there, big fella. No one’s dissing your relatives.

    As a guy who’s closing in fast on 60 years of age, I applaud the PWYL staff for trying hard to make this gem of a software easy to use by folks other than the usual suspects (i.e. ages 15 to 30).

    It’s just a fact that most (not all) of those in the older generation don’t grasp tech the same way you (and apparently your older kin) do.

    (and, no, I’m not Cassie’s dad!)

  15. Gene says:

    I am also a guy approaching 60 however I have the advantage of being a geek. When actually printing, I prefer to use my browser’s (I use Firefox) print preview button. If a page is included that has info I do not want I don’t print that page. I use a free pdf printer. I find that the Print What You Like bookmarklet is very useful and if you actually read how to use it, it is no problem.

  16. vege says:

    printwhatyoulike
    when i save as PDF,there are all ??? characters.
    The original char is chinese.