After you read an article on the web, there are two things that you would want to do with them. You may either want to take a print out or send it to your friends. Similarly, your site will be a success, if you make these two tasks easier for your visitors to carry out.

The Print and Send Links
There must be clear links to 'print the article' or 'send this article to a friend', at either the top or bottom of every article. Presentation is totally up to you, but it is often recommended to write in at the bottom next to the byline. The 'print' link can be put up at the top and 'sending' link at the bottom.

Certain icons are also used to denote 'sending' and 'printing' functions. The sending link uses the picture of an envelope, whereas the printing icon contains the picture of a printer. These pictures clearly denote their functions. Sometimes, the icons are used alone without the text, which save valuable space without causing any harm to their usability.

CSS for Printing
It is very true that most of the web pages look horrible if they are printed as it is. There is no need for any ads, links or navigation in the print out. So, it is good if these unnecessary things can be removed from the page before the user takes a printout. This can be done with the use of a built-in mechanism of CSS, where you choose different styles depending on the medium. For instance, the default for screen display is media:screen, whereas for printing media:print is used.

It is quite easy to switch from screen to print CSS stylesheet when someone press the print button. For doing this, a second stylesheet is to be added below the first.

The HTML would look something like:

<link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" href="mystyle.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="stylesheet" media="print" href="mystyle-print.css" type="text/css">

All CSS to be applied before printing takes place are contained in the mystyle-print.css, nothing is taken from mystyle.css. These stylesheets are applied by the browsers automatically as soon as the print button is pressed.

Sending Pages
For sending an article to any other person, the user must be presented with three input boxes:

* Their name or email address.
* The recipient's email address.
* Any customized message.

An email is created from this information. For example, in PHP, a simple mail () function is used. In the 'from' field, the information entered by the user should be entered. Keep the message short and to the point.

For example, there are two way for sending the same article.

* Felt you will like this! www.article.com/example/123
* You have been sent an article from article.com! The sender said: "Felt you will like this!" www.article.com/example/123

The first one is better as it emphasizes that the article has been sent by the friend, not the website. This will make the people more likely to click on the link.