Lesson 10 Assignment

Find two sites with printable versions of their pages and with support for e-mailing a page to other users. Try using the features. Write a paragraph about which site's print and e-mail features you like better, and why.

WebMD

I looked up the article Going Veggie?
At first I scrolled right past the "email to a friend" and "printer-friendly" links (not seeing them at the top of the page, I assumed they'd be at the bottom); they are located under an ad for MS info, near the top of the page on the right-hand side.

Clicking on the "email to a friend" link I got a form with these fields:
Friend's first name
Friend's E-mail
Personal message
Your name
Your e-mail address
then click SEND

The printer-friendly version lost the left-hand navigation column and the right-hand ad and displayed the URL nicely on top.
The email I received contained the article title and a link to it.


Miss Manners

This column is from the September 3rd issue of The Washington Post.
The E-Mail This Article and Printer-Friendly Version links were the THIRD item in the right hand column (after "Add Miss Manners to your personal home page" and "Free E-mail Newsletters"), but they were still above the fold.

The e-mail option pulled up another screen (much longer than the one on WebMD; it required vertical scrolling while WebMD's did not, even at 800 x 600).
Send this story to
Your e-mail address
Add a personal message
and then: radio buttons for the options:
summary and link
link only
full text of story
then click SEND
so I sent myself the summary and link, and the full story. The summary was the first question from the column.

The printer-friendly version reproduced the font of the original and cut out all ads and sidebars.

Conclusion

E-Mail feature WebMD only sent the link; no option to send full text
Washington Post gave options to send link, link with brief summary, or full text email -- so I preferred this one, though it would be nice if they had a shorter form, like WebMD.
Print option WebMD had a bit more color in their page (small icon at the top, article headers, article URL), and the Washington Post only had color in the email address at the end of the article. Since my printer ignores commands to print web pages in black only, the WebMD article wasted more of my color ink, but not enough to really fuss about. The WebMD article also had a smaller, sans-serif font which looked more professional.
The Washington Post had an almost entirely black printout (see note for WebMD) and a bigger serif font. It also looked good and was easy to read. Both articles printed with margins of 3/4" which seemed a little weird, but maybe that's just me. Both tended to have a slightly bigger right-hand margin. If I wanted to put these printouts in a binder this would be irritating.
I didn't have a very strong preference for either printout.