"hit print"

we dare you.

What better way to prove the point that your bargain ink sucks than by printing their ad. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Just looking at that ad makes my printer thirsty!

Ironically, the ad does not take up 65% of the page.

@Laura Northrup: Also, I have no idea what they are trying to do by pseudo-emphasizing "than" in that sentence. Same goes for "give you".

I'm not a native english speaker, but still, it just sounds wrong.

Who the hell prints out a 10 day forecast?
What's the point? 8 hours from now, it will change. 9 out of the 10 days will be completely inaccurate.
Last week, here in NY they said it was going to rain from Wednesday to Saturday. Actual rainfall? None.

Who prints out the weather forecast?

Not being snarky, just wondering if I'm missing some important life-skill; is everybody suddenly carrying around 10-day forecasts in their wallets, just in case someone asks in polite conversation?

It's old/wrong the moment you hit the print button.

I'm curious if the ad would print. Maybe the print link goes to a non ad page.

Did you try printing it? I did. Guess what wasn't on the printed page? The ad.

Ok nevermind, it does actually include the ad, I just tried it. What a joke.

@post_break: My guess is the "print" command loads up a printer friendly version of the information.

Well, at least thats how most reputable content providers do it.

@suburbancowboy: +1. The weather forecasting here (not far from you in CT) has been dismal ... as in, dead wrong ... consistently for the last couple of months. We had waves of rain in the summer that were not forecast, or were said to go away much sooner than they did, and then last week we had several days of rain forecast but it never materialized.

Weather forecasting in New England has never been all that accurate. But it has been MUCH worse than usual, and it's been that way for a good several weeks now. Something has gone terribly wrong with weather forecasting.

@post_break: Damn it, I wish I could delete my comments or edit them. I didn't actually print them, the print preview was as far as I got. Ad block removed the ad on the first try however.

@savvy999: There are places that will print out a weather forecast (although not necessarily a 10 day one). Most common that I've seen: Schools and hotels.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: Well, I got the ad.

@Mr_Human:
It seems post_break did too. What browser are you using? I used Firefox 3.5.3 on OS X. No add-ons except Firebug, which doesn't block ads. For me it printed all of the images inside the 10 day forecast box, but it didn't print the ad on the side or the header graphic.

@suburbancowboy:
Regardless of who prints it out, the purpose of the printable version of the page is to allow you to print it without all of the crap around it.

@post_break: I just printed it - no ad.

I just printed it - no ad.

Is this possibly a settings issue?

@MostlyHarmless: They're emphasizing everything *but* those words. Kind of loses it's effect that way though. Kind of like tabloid-sized like the NY Post. It's hard to take it seriously when every single day the major headline is LARGE AND TAKES UP THE ENTIRE FRONT PAGE.

Maybe the HP ad non-emphasis makes more sense if you imagine William Shatner reading it.

@suburbancowboy: "Who the hell prints out a 10 day forecast?"

their target demographic.

"HIT PRINT, STUPID!"

@MostlyHarmless: Figure vs. ground. They're emphasizing "ORIGINAL HP INKS," not "give you," and "PAGES" and "BARGAIN INKS," not "than."

Just a bad decision to use an italic for the normal, un-emphasized text.

Just block the ad and print. Firefox + NoScript. Flashblock for the bonus round.

@suburbancowboy: Golf Courses and Hotels

Firefox and Adblock FTW.
And if that fails, print as PDF, open in Illustrator, remove ad, and print.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: So what you're saying is the problem with the Print Page programming which is the fault of the Weather Channel site, not HP, one of their many advertisers, right?

You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? A perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility... Pure - a survivor unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

My lovely HP printer, when there is an error (printing is interrupted somehow) prints out a lovely ink wasting test page.

It also does this sometimes if I select "print black cartridge only"/grayscale which I do for most everything.

i love adblock.

@suburbancowboy: That's funny. 10-day forecasts usually work fine here in California. :D

@MostlyHarmless: It does not. That's the first thing I thought of, so I tried clicking print and printing it to a pdf. The pdf had a large, mostly black HP ad in it.

Why are you even mentioning HP. This has nothing to do with them. The headline is misleading.

you don't need firefox to use adblock by the way. I'm a fan of memory so I use safari with adblock, ftw.

@Framling: Thats what my point is.

@bendee: Hotels usually print out the forecast onto a page that touts their hotel. I could only see a bait shop or some mom & pop place printing this out for their customers to see at the front desk.

@Colonel Jack O'Neill: In much the same way that swimming has nothing to do with motion.

@Vanilla5: No. Most websites have a "print friendly" version by default that strips away heavy graphics elements that are not central to the story.

@MostlyHarmless: Then why are some people getting the ad when they print it and some people aren't? I'm using the "Print this Forecast" button and am getting no ad. Are others just hitting "File > Print"?

@Vanilla5: Possibly. if the css is not configured that way, then that is what happens.

@suburbancowboy: I doubt they printed it, probably just wanted the "printer-friendly" view so it was easier to read and irony ensued...

if you don't print it, then you will never appreciate your ink.

This post is not worthy of Consumerist - I'm disappointed by this baseless sensationalism.

Isnt there a print friendly setting on the webpage.

When will people learn to implement printer style sheets? Wikipedia does it - print any Wikipedia article and you don't get the sidebar but you get the article contents. That's a CSS style sheet set up for printing. Why can't more sites do this?

@Crazytree:

By default, Firefox won't print backgrounds.
Also, if you don't want to print that image, you can just right click on the image and select "Block images from ..."

if i needed it that badly i'd do what i do with anything else when i am in a hurry: screen cap, crop, print just the bits i need and leave off all the other stuff.
[i do that at work a lot because i really don't want any chance of login names or website headers showing up on the community printer]

@Vandelay Import Export: Everyone owns that piece of software you know. It comes preinstalled on all PC's

I sent this in back in Feb 26 08 and got this message:

Thanks for the tip. We'll check it out!

THERESA 
INTERN
THE CONSUMERIST

@MostlyHarmless: I'm hitting the "print this forecast" button and I am not getting an ad.

Following directions FTW!