I came across a really interesting site the other day called PrintFriendly.com. Their service is a simple yet powerful one: to empower individuals viewing content on the web to have greater control over the content of any page that they wish to print to paper or .pdf format. From their web site:
“How It Works
* Prints Clean: Our algorithm removes ads, navigation, and all the junk you don’t want to print.
* Prints Pretty: We use best practices in print Typography to format your document for great readability.
* Customize: Save even more paper and ink, remove images, paragraphs, and Get PDF”
I played around with the service on a few pages, and it works very well! Of course, while I was in there I thought I would experiment with a few images on their home page as well:
Unoptimized 277×323 pixel .png graphic – 76,339 bytes
Optimized 277×323 pixel .png graphic – 68,895 bytes
Unoptimized 291×279 pixel .png graphic – 22,077 bytes
Optimized 291×279 pixel .png graphic – 5,447 bytes
Unoptimized 207×102 pixel .png graphic – 23,439 bytes
Optimized 207×102 pixel .png graphic – 18,765 bytes
Unoptimized 219×63 pixel .png graphic – 10,461 bytes
Optimized 219×63 pixel .png graphic – 8,538 bytes
Unoptimized 214×106 pixel .png graphic – 18,165 bytes
Optimized 214×106 pixel .png graphic – 14,952 bytes
Some quick batch optimization work using PNGSlim took 146 KB in imagery and reduced them to 113 KB in cumulative size, an improvement of 23 percent. Not too bad! A quick way for making the PrintFriendly web site a little more “web friendly.” 
Thanks PrintFriendly! Awesome tool you’ve got there.
