It’s right there in front of you!

When I print off a web page I like to have the URL printed with it, and the date of printing is often handy also. Well it must be the New Year or the summer heat or being away from work for mumble-mumble months but for the life of me I just couldn’t make it work in Firefox or Safari this morning.

It turns out that the solution was right there in front of me all the time. After selecting File->Print, the print dialog box appears:

Image of the Firefox Print dialog box

Select the third drop-down box as indicated by the dirty big arrow in the screen grap above (”Copies & Pages” is selected by default on my machine). Scroll down to “Firefox” or “Safari” and depending on your weapon of choice you’re presented with a wealth of options:

Image of the Firefox Print dialog box

Or in the case of Safari (version 2.x.x), a few options (but the critical ones):

Image of the Firefox Print dialog box

At the bottom of the options in Firefox are “Page Headers” and “Page Footers”, which you can customise for your reading pleasure. I’ve also opted-out of “Print Background Colors” and “Print Background Images” because such things are almost always an egregious waste of toner.

OK, so it’s obvious but I was having a total brain fade this morning…

(Note to self: remember to check all menu options before going bananas.)