Ok so i'm still undecided about the new layout, but how about an option for printable versions of the articles/guides? This would allow for someone trying, say the electronics guide, to have a hard copy while sitting at their workbench, heh not the amiga workbench - the power tool type workbench, beavering away on their latest project.
It was planned all along, but wasn't deemed as *essential* for the launch of the new site, so we dropped it in order to get the job finished One possibility is that we make certain article ie guides, available for download via PDF. I'm loathe to implement a site-wide Printable Version like you see on other sites, since some people think it's a clever way of viewing content (and thus eating bandwidth) banner-free. If Slashdot linked to the Printable Version, we would chew through 100GB or more without any ad impressions to help pay for it For a low-tech solution, you could always copy & paste into Word...
Wow...at first I thought, "What a great idea, printable versions!" But you make a good point, Pope. PDF may be a great way to go. OR...perhaps we could do the printable versions only for the "guide" type articles? That's really all they're truly useful for...
Remember you can specify alternate stylesheets for print (add media="print" to the <link href="..."> tag) where you can hide and reposition any elements you want to make it print-friendly. Doing it this way stops people being able to view the stripped-down version of the page in a browser and will save bandwidth as the users won't need to load a whole new page to view a printer-friendly version. Of course the fact that the page will print with a different style to what they see on screen will need to be made clear to people somehow, but that's a small price to pay
You picked on Electronic guides...with most, the schematic needs a landscape print on its own page anyway to be readable, so I "Save image" and mess. That could be done OK for a pdf version, but media="print" has some clever tricks IIRC.
Yeah, take a look at CSS print styling. That'll keep ppl from avoiding the ads, and keep the editors from having to crank out PDFs for everything. You can specify "portrait" or "landscape" orientation in print stylesheets, along with other formatting tricks. So articles with diagrams & such should be possible. cpemma, that's an evil, evil link you've got in your sig. I like it...
Even if you don't change anything, with only few articles a week it is not that difficult to copy paste it into some sort of typing software or print selection.
