Earlier today, I had to submit an application form online and I had to take a printout. The printed webpage fitted on two pages, with just a single line on the second page. I thought this is a waste of paper, so I decided to find some way to shrink the webpage to fit on a single printer page. I found PrintPunk, which is a freeware Internet Explorer tool that can help you fit a webpage to a single printer page.
PrintPunk is an Internet Explorer plugin that can save your printing pages, printer ink and therefore save the trees and the environment. It supports Internet Explorer version 6.0 and above. It works on Windows XP, Vista and 7. Here are some of the key features of PrintPunk:
- Fit to Printer Page: Automatically fit web page to printer page when printing.
- Fix web page print problems: Fixes the problem where Internet explorer does not print the right hand side of a page, therefore no more cut off tables when printing.
- Printing Zoom: Easily shrink and enlarge pages for printing.
- On-Screen Zoom & Shrink: Zoom web pages to larger or smaller size on screen for better viewing.
- Auto Fit to window: Fit the web page to the internet explorer window automatically.
- Reduce printed pages: Reduce the number of printed pages by shrinking the web page before printing.
After installing the PrintPunk plugin in Internet Explorer, you can see its toolbar in all the Internet Explorer windows. You can use the buttons in the toolbar or the menu to control the size of webpage, hide the images of the webpage, zoom or shrink the webpage or print the webpage. The Fit button fits the current webpage to the browser window. The Auto-Fit button automatically fits the webpage to the browser window even when you resize the window.
The Shrink and Zoom buttons do the obvious zoom-out and zoom-in functions for the webpage. You can also hold the Ctrl and press the − and + keys for these functions. If you click on the Images button, then it would show or hide he images on the webpage. This is helpful if you do not want to print the images on a webpage and want to print just the text. Clicking on the Print button, opens the print preview of the currently open webpage.
In the print preview window, you can see how many pages would it take to print the webpage. If you are satisfied with the webpage print format then you can go ahead and click on the Print button in the print preview window. This would start to print the selected webpage in your printer.
PrintPunk is a great tool for Internet Explorer and all the browsers based on the Internet Explorer engine (like Maxthon or Avant browsers). It enhances the printing functionality for Microsoft Internet Explorer. It allows you to shrink or zoom the webpages prior to printing. You can save your printer paper by reducing the number of pages using PrintPunk.
You can download PrintPunk from its website at http://www.printpunk.com/.