Web site printout problem

I sometimes find a printout of a web site has skipped a few lines at the
end of the page or, worse, has superimposed some large text on the text I
want to save. Often I print out a site so I can read it later when I have
more time. Using Print Preview - if I remember to use it - helps me be
aware of the superimposed material but unless I read all the text carefully
on all print pages I'll be unaware of the missing material. I'm using
Firefox 39. Is there possibly an XP Home setting that can avoid this
problem?

TIA

--
You know it's time to clean the refrigerator
when something closes the door from the inside.

KenK wrote:
I sometimes find a printout of a web site has skipped a few lines at the
end of the page or, worse, has superimposed some large text on the text I
want to save. Often I print out a site so I can read it later when I have
more time. Using Print Preview - if I remember to use it - helps me be
aware of the superimposed material but unless I read all the text carefully
on all print pages I'll be unaware of the missing material. I'm using
Firefox 39. Is there possibly an XP Home setting that can avoid this
problem?

TIA


There are a couple ways, none of them intended for humans :-)

1) Save As, Web Page Complete.

Find the offending .js file with all the Facebook and
Google+ buttons, and remove the reference to it. In other
words, clean up the web site source, then open the
modified web page which is stored on your hard drive,
with Firefox. Do your print.

I may have used Seamonkey Composer on some occasion,
to load and edit a Firefox "Web Page Complete" captured
page.

2) Print to PostScript or PDF. The Z axis priority of items
might be preserved in there (one blob over top of another
blob, if you remove the top-most blob, the one underneath
will be perfectly visible). Your chances of finding a
"good enough" editor, to pick items and delete them,
is pretty limited. You could spend the rest of your life
testing editors, until you find one which is good enough.
For example, I tested an editor yesterday, that couldn't
handle TrueType font metrics properly (ugh!).

So yes, when I needed to send a printout to someone, a
printout cleaned of "web nonsense", I resorted to (1).
There is no guarantee this will always work. The Save As,
Web Page Complete of Firefox, appears to be thwarted by
web sites that don't want you copying some .js files. So
sometimes it takes extra effort to get a complete file
set. The web site owner has control over what you can do,
and can make your life miserable.

On a number of occasions, I've removed red-colored
"Do Not Copy" text from PDF files, and I do stuff like
that because I'm a villain. I have received documents
on "red paper", intended to stop Xeroxing, and reproduced
those too. One reason for such activity, is when a
"Do Not Copy" text, the person inserting it is too
clueless to put it on the bottom layer of their
document, and it is actually obscuring some text.
That gives me the motivation I need, to hack it.

But none of these techniques are exactly convenient.

If you're missing some lines of text on a page, it
could be the web page is intended for people in
"A4 paper" countries, and you're printing to "Letter".
I use a print driver on my setup here, which allows
huge page sizes, so I can arrange quite a few web pages
to "print on one sheet of paper". However, that's a dead
end, unless you have some tool that can re-jig the paper
size and make it useful again. I don't currently
have a tool like that.

HTH,
Paul

In addition to what Paul said, have you tried going
to View - Style - No Style? I find that I'm using
that more and more as webpages become increasingly
complex and dysfunctional. It wasn't so long ago that
I found almost all websites to work fine. Now it's common
to find style problems of all kinds. If you disable style
you'll get a very simple webpage, with a 90s look to it.
It's not pretty, but it's readable.

Personally, if I want to read a long article I usually
just select the text and copy it, then paste to Notepad.
Then I paste the URL at the top. I can save many such
articles easily, taking up very little space. I have something
that's easier to read and far smaller than the original page.
It will also be easier and cheaper to print, not wasting
your colored ink on decorations and photos that you
don't need.