Issue #0733/2 - Hewlett-Packard has entered into several strategic relationships (Disney, Flickr, Windows Live Spaces and Graffiti Application for Facebook) that will offer users of the target web sites a more friendly and pleasing approach to printing web content.
Being a printer company, Hewlett-Packard has long been interested in the internet as a printing medium. More than a decade ago, I was asked by a Hewlett-Packard manager if I knew of anyone who was an expert in web printing. At the time the answer was no. Sadly, it has taken that decade for Hewlett-Packard to become the expert it desired to meet.
Hewlett-Packard initially has targeted high-volume internet sites where printing activities should be significant. It is claimed that 267 million visits were made to the web sites of these new partners during the month of September alone.
Hewlett-Packard states, “Each visit represents an opportunity to provide an improved customer experience as well as to merchandise digital content in new and compelling ways.”
What must also be recognized is that it is also an opportunity for Hewlett-Packard to drive up the number of pages printed (hopefully on Hewlett-Packard printers!) at a time when the need to print is, to a degree, diminishing due to greater emphasis on email and other digital methods of communicating and archiving.
When Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president at Hewlett-Packard’s Imaging and Printing Group, says, “People are frustrated with printing from the web”, he is certainly not wrong! How many times have you wanted to print a travel schedule, purchase confirmation, or news item, only to find that the right hand end is unceremoniously chopped off with a few characters, or even words, missing?
Taking this to heart should be the automatic objective of the designer of any serious web site. Maybe not every site can be perfect and maybe Hewlett-Packard has a better chance than some of solving these printing issues because of its expertise in the field and the resources available to it, but there should be no excuse for actually losing text from the printed page.
Using one of Hewlett-Packard’s exhibition sites as an example (below), we see extracts from a printed blog page showing the difference between printing the page using the standard ‘Print’ command in the File menu and using the dedicated ‘Print’ button located on the page. The difference is quite startling.
Not only has all the surrounding paraphernalia (garbage) been eliminated but the page now looks like a printed page not a web page on paper.
Considering how long the internet has been a major information source, this tightening up of the print capability is long-overdue - well done Hewlett-Packard.
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