What's the best way to print all of Steve's posts?

[jbischke]

I'd like to print up all of Steve's blog posts in a user-friendly fashion (i.e. no ads, menus, etc.) so I can read them offline. What's the best way to do this?

[geekchic9]

If I had the know-how, I'd write a Perl script that did the following:

1. Go to http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/archives.

2. Until there are no more articles:
a) Pull all article links from the page through a link-checker. They all start with http://stevepavlina.com/blog/year/month/title. The title is what we want.
b) Put each article link in a stack, so they will print in chronological order.
c) Download and print each article from its link in the stack.

Or, you could do it the old fashioned way, and print it by hand. But that would take a long, long time.

[jbischke]

Hmmm...I gotta think there is a better way (no disrespect ). For instance, is it possible to pull all the posts down through a feed reader (like Bloglines) and print them from there. I tried that earlier and I'm not sure Steve keeps all his posts in his feed. So that would be one possibility. Any others?

[MartialDev]

Yes, there is a better way.

If your goal is to archive and read them offline, just use SuperBot to download a copy of http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/ onto your computer. Then you retain all the benefits of digital copies (e.g. easily searchable), without the need for an Internet connection.

It's easy to use, so give it a try.

[jbischke]

Thaks MartialDev. I guess I need to clarify though. I actually want hard copies of these (so I can read them at the beach, etc.). So I am looking for the most efficient way to print them.

[Minsc]

Steve might use the print media type in his css which would change the apperance of the site when you print it.

He does, actually: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/print.css" media="print" >

So click on "File > Print Preview" in your browser and see if you're fine with what you see...
Although you would still need to print 500 articles... An autoclicker might help.

[Stargirl]

Do you really need to print all of them? Couldn't you print a few at a time?

IMO printing ALL his articles would mean an overwhelming stack...

that I would never touch again


because it was so intimidating....

[MartialDev]

Originally Posted by jbischke

Thaks MartialDev. I guess I need to clarify though. I actually want hard copies of these (so I can read them at the beach, etc.). So I am looking for the most efficient way to print them.

This is what I would try:

1) Download them all with SuperBot.
2) Use Windows Explorer' Search feature to list all the saved HTML files.
3) Ctrl-A to select all search results, right-click, and choose Print.

There are other ways, but they are more complicated than this.

[Minsc]

Originally Posted by MartialDev

3) Ctrl-A to select all search results, right-click, and choose Print.

I don't see a "print" on the context menu for HTML files...
I use Firefox though.

You would need to be able to get your browser to print from the command line in order for one to appear(IE might have one).

Also, printing them all at the same time from the context menu would cause many hundreds of instances of your browser to show up and probably ask you which printer you want to print on. You'll have to do it from a batch file to only have one instance of your browser running, assuming you can print from the command line...

You could also try some third-party software to do it: Daisy - Print HTML File
I'm not sure if it can be called from the command line though and do an unattended print.

Also, it might screw up the webpage depending on how they render it.

[MartialDev]

You're right, it does bring up multiple print windows. They appear one at a time in the same place though, so you only need to click the mouse once per article.

A batch file might be easier, assuming you know how to write it.