Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Slow Acroread Startup in OpenSuSe 11.0

It takes more than 30 seconds for acroread to load on my Opensuse machine the first time and the startup time gets shorter in subsequent attempts. Why? This is not the first time I have come across this problem of slow application startups in OpenSuse. Apparently a lot of people had encountered this problem and they found a simple solution - uninstalling the version of acroread that comes with OpenSuse and installing one from Adobe site yourself. Fortunately, that prescription seems to have solved the problem. My acroread startup time is a few seconds now. Why does a very good Linux distribution like OpenSuse with its wide support and following make so many of these mistakes?!?! Over the years, I have seen Suse/OpenSuse sending buggy distributions that make you wonder if they do much testing before releasing their distro. Here are a few bugs I have come across: The extremely slow startup of Openoffice in OpenSuse 10.0 was one of the reasons I switched to Fedora Core for a while...

The Pervasive Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux Analogy

I'm sure everyone has seen the Mac vs. PC ads on TV where the Mac appears to be confident while th PC is in denial about its deficiencies. Missing from that picture is Linux which is robust, but seeks no attention because it has no commercial ambitions. This Mac vs. PC vs. Linux model can serve as a analogy for many things/phenomena. I would like to make a list of those analogies here. For example, The New York Times recently characterized Hillary as a PC and Obama as a mac on the basis of the design of their websites. The analogy would also work if you think of Hillary as the status quo much like Windows, and Obama as the new thing with great promise, cachet and appeal like the newly reborn mac. It is not obvious who would play the role of Linux, but my choice would be Ron Paul. He has some bold and independent ideas along with a very loyal following even though he has no chance of winning. PC Mac Linux Candidate Hillary Clinton Barack Obama Ron Paul States Northeast West Co...

Movies for the Idle Mind

Wondering how I fill my idle hours and days? Among other things, I watch a few movies here and there. Here is a list I downloaded using Bittorrent and am watching at the pace of a movie non-enthusiast. The rating for the movies I have already watched are shown while it is left empty for the others. Woody Allen:: # MOVIE MY RATING ( /10) 1 Annie Hall 10 2 Manhattan 8 3 Hannah and Her Sisters 9 4 Love and Death 8 5 Deconstructing Harry 6 6 Match Point 5 7 Antz 8 8 Play it Again, Sam 8 9 Husbands and Wives 10 The Purple Rose of Cairo 11 Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex, But Were Afraid To Ask OTHER:: # MOVIE MY RATING ( /10) 1 Citizen Kane 7 2 Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind 9 3 The Pursuit of Happyness 6 4 About Schmidt 5 5 The Royal Tenenbaums 10 6 Rushmore 7 7 The Big Lebowski 9 8 Monty Python and the Holy Grail 7 9 Ed Wood 8 10 Broken Flowers 8 11 Basketball Diaries 8 12 Crash 13 The Clockwork Orange 14 City of God 15 The Science of Sleep 16 La Dolce Vita 17...