QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS

Is here any easy way of printing out Chemguide?

The short answer to this is "no!"

At the time of writing (May 2007), Chemguide had almost 400 web pages of information - not counting the various menus.

If you were to print the whole lot, you would have to do it page by page and it would run to a huge amount of paper. Depending on the font size your browser is set to (see below), a single web page could easily take 10 sheets of A4 to print out. You would end up with a completely unmanageable heap of paper!

You also lose the advantage of being able to jump quickly from one page to another following links to clarify things you don't understand. Because Chemguide is designed exclusively for the web, there isn't an index and there aren't any page numbers. I can't see how you can possibly organise this great pile of paper in any way that would make it useable.

That being said, it is undoubtedly easier (or at least I find it easier) to work from printed material than from a screen. Apart from anything else there are less distractions. It might therefore pay you to print out just the odd web page that you find particularly difficult to follow. (Although if you find it really difficult to follow and aren't just suffering from too much social life, I would welcome an e-mail telling me why you are finding it difficult. It may be possible to rewrite it to make it clearer.)

Before you print anything, though, be sure that you aren't wasting paper. If your browser is set to a fairly large font size to make it easy to read on the screen, you aren't going to get all that many words on each piece of A4 paper. For example, my browsers are set to a default font size of 14, but you can easily read a printed font size of 10 - perhaps even smaller. Experiment a bit to find the smallest readable font before you start printing seriously.

It is much easier to adjust the font size on some browsers than others. You may need to go to the browser's preferences, but it is much simpler to use a keyboard short-cut if you can. I use an Apple Mac, and many browsers use the "command" key together with the fairly obvious "+" or "-" key to adjust font size. On a Windows machine, the same thing will probably work using the "control" key in place of the "command" key. If you are using an awkward browser where you can't find a short-cut and are forced to use the preferences menu, switch to an easier one! I like Firefox. You can get it by following this link.

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