printerfriendly = printer / text mode version

  <!--mksite:printerfriendly-->
  <a href="${printerfriendly:=site.htm}" title="printer friendly version">
  <img alt="printer / text mode version" width="8" height="8" border="0" /></a>

That creates an intermediate printersitefile to contain definitions for horizontal navigation bars created out of the information for the access tree as given in the original sitefile. Those horizontal bars reflect the sect/subsect relations in a way most usable form for being navigated with a text mode browser (e.g. lynx) - in text mode the same "printerfriendly" page looks slightly different:

textmode-example.print.html

|| - project - [ features ] - examples - links - || - example - sitemaps - [ text mode version ] - || - WAI - SubSects -      lorem ipsum

|go text: || - project - [ features ] - examples - links -
||topics: || - example -  sitemaps - [ text mode version ] -    
|||pages: || - WAI - SubSects -
  lorem ipsum...

Note how there are little squares in the graphical view (if you look at this page with a graphical browser) that will be replaced with some alt-texts when using a textmode browser. These title-texts/alt-texts originally hint for the sect/subsect relation (section to topics: to pages:) but the first entry is slightly different in textmode - it is named go text: and the hot link under it will actually jump down to right after the header navigation block (here: jumping to lorem ipsum heading).

That variant is recommended by WAI texts to help blind people to read the text with a text-to-speech machine or a braille terminal i.e. purely linear starting with the first word on the page. There it is best to have a first hotlink on the page that should help to skip down to the main body text, and it should bear a caption saying just that (like "skip down to text"). It is hinted to put it under an invisible image so the graphical view representation is not spoiled by the down-to-text hint. Actually I hope that "go text:" is identifying this functionality as well. Technically, the hot link under "go text:" skips to "#." - as we have generated a little html anchor in the print.html text as <a name="."></a> marking the end of the header navigation block.

The "go text:" is the replacment for the img-square of the first navigation line (for sections). The hotlink under the second img-square (replaced by "topics:" in the text mode view) points back to the normal sitefile representation for colored graphical browsers. It is the only backlink to the original sitefile representation. On return it would be best if there is a link to the text mode version in the graphical sitefile represention. And there it is advisable to give it the very same look of the (mksite.sh) generated little img-squares in the print.html view. That's what the cut-n-paste text at the top of this page is showing - to make a little <img> with no "src=" and size of 8x8. The very same thing generated into the "*.print.html" header block for each sect/subsect navigation.

To expand on it, in the normal graphical sitefile representation you should use two text replacement around the hotlink to the "$printerfriendly" version. - The alt-text replacement of the <img> tag is only seen with text mode browsers, so we let it read as "(go to) printer / text mode version" (it is a hot link by the surrounding <a href>). For the surrounding href we set a "title=" attribute however - modern browsers will present it as a little (yellow) popup text when hovering the mouse pointer over it. Here we set the hint for a functionality most useful to people with graphical browsers, it says "(go to) printer friendly version". That's because the generated "*.print.html" has less colors and no big shadowed navigation bar.

Note that our printerfriendly mode is clever enough to replace all hrefs in the header lines and the body text with hrefs to the "*.print.html" version generated. So when all your crafted htm(l) files are listed in the sitefile then a user with a text mode browser will never errornously leave the text mode oriented mode when clicking on a (website internal) hotlink. It will always end on the printerfriendly "*.print.html" variant.

textmode-example.html
 

textmode version	project	features	examples	links
project - navlist - items	lorem ipsum

textmode versions      project features examples links
printer / text mode version                          
------------------------------------------------------------
project                                              
- navlist                                            
- items                                              
------------------------------------------------------------
...

    lorem ipsum