On the Meaning of Printable

My company's own modest website http://andrewhennigan.com may not win any prizes, but I am pretty confident that if you try to print any page you will not be disappointed by the result. It is made deliberatley that way since i am routinely frustrated by unprintable pages.

Just to give one example, following up on the Beatrice Rose posting (see http://andrewhennigan.blogspot.com/2007/12/faded-images-of-beatrice-rose-london.html) I googled Beatrice Rose and the first page I found is the profile of actress Beatrice Rose on CastingCall.com. You can test this page for yourself at http://uk.castingcallpro.com/view.php?uid=66216

The standard page is beyond unprintable, it actually wedges my computer -- just a few months old and kept meticulously up to date -- so completely it took me some time to restore normal operation. And even the "printable" page simply prints the left hand side of the page, giving the ludicrous result of listing things like "playing range, height, wright, hair color, eye color and build" but the actual data is cut off. So all I have in my pocket is a piece of paper telling me that Beatrice has a range, a weight, a height and perhaps also colored eyes, but this is hardly enough to guarantee her a role anywhere.

In spite of this problem Ms Rose seems to have had no trouble finding work judging by her curriculum, but the way the page is printed all I can see without returning to the site is the name of the production, and not where it was made.

If there is a moral here for web designers and the people who pay them it is this. Sacrifice a few sheets of old paper -- use the backs of unwanted old prints -- just to see what happens when you print a page from your website. It takes just a few minutes but will boost your reputation for professionalism.

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