Save Some Paper and Ink with Aardvark

I am sure you are tired of printing garbage like ads and someone else's colorful artwork while all you wanted was have a hard-copy of some clean text and graphics. If you are a Mozilla Firefox user, there is a solution that can save you lot of paper and ink/toner. It is a Firefox add-on called Aardvark, and it allows you to selectively remove sections of a web page before sending it to a printer. Here is a little synopsis:

Powerful and user-friendly utility for selecting elements and doing various actions on them. It can be used for cleaning up a page prior to printing it (by removing and isolating elements), for making the page more readable, and (most appreciated by web developers), for analyzing the structure of a page.

To use Aardvark, just right-click on the page and select from the popup menu. As you move the mouse over the page, you will see a red rectangle around the current block element, along with a label showing its type, and if they exist, its id, class, and style. You can then press various keys on the keyboard to do things, for instance W to navigate wider (as shown in the image), R to remove the element, I to isolate the element (that is, remove everything else on the page), V to view formatted source of that element, U to undo, Q to quit aardvark, and H for help, that is, a list of the 12 available keystrokes.

What I like most about Aardvark is that it has worked on all the websites I have tried it on regardless of their content and complexity. Plus, it runs only when you invoke it, not constantly in the background eating up valuable resources. This idea has inspired an plan I have had to block all ad servers. I am honestly not influenced by ads -- why are they wasting valuable bandwidth on me? It is time to block all ad servers from reaching me. If successful, that would be a subject of a future post.

By the way, I came across the Aavdvark info while searching easy blog printing options for my devoted readership of one. A solution to that problem will be the subject of my next post.

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