Google Reader – Printing Full Text For All Items

I normally use a desktop feed reader, but I’ve recently been trying out web based feed readers. Google Reader seems to be the best, but it lacks the ability to print more than one full text item in the Expanded View. A simple hack to the Google Reader Print Button script for Greasemonkey fixes this.

The Problem

I find printing multiple full text entries useful when catching up with feeds I’ve gotten behind on. Unfortunately, Google Reader only prints the currently selected item. There is no way to select more than one item.

Bloglines does allow you to print multiple entries, so I’ve been using Google Reader to read feeds I’m up to date with, and using Bloglines to print feeds for those I’m not. Messy!

Google Reader Print Button

Enter K-IntheHouse over at ShanKri-la, who has a habit of making my life easier by writing about Firefox extensions I don’t know about. This time he mentioned the Google Reader Print Button script in his Top 15 Greasemonkey Scripts for GMail & Google Reader post. The description (from userscripts.org) sounded promising:

Add a print button to Google Reader at the bottom bar (with Previous/Next Item). This button open a new window with the content of the selected item, and launches the printing window. If no item is selected, prints all loaded items.

I installed this ASAP. The initial results were a little disappointing. In Google Reader’s List View, it prints all items loaded (Google Reader doesn’t load all items until you scroll down), but it only prints a one line summary.

When you first go to the Expanded View, it prints the full text for all items loaded. However, there may may only be a handful of items loaded and as soon as you scroll down, Google Reader automatically selects an item. After this, it will only print the full text for the one item that is selected.

Hacking The Script

Thankfully, this problem can be easily solved by making a very simple hack to the script. Here are the steps (assuming you have installed the script):

1. Right-Click on the Greasemonkey icon in Firefox
2. Click Manage User Scripts and a dialog box will open
3. Select Google Reader Print Button from the list
4. Click the Edit button (at the bottom of the dialog box)
5. If asked for the location of a text editor, find one on your hard drive (if you use Notepad, start by looking for C:\Windows\Notepad.exe)
6. Make the change shown below, then Save, Close and click Okay
7. Refresh (F5) Google Reader to make sure the changes are loaded

The change is to simply comment out two lines of code by adding // in front of them. Find the following (around line 14):

   if (!entry) {
    entry = document.getElementById('entries');
   }

and change it to:

//   if (!entry) {
    entry = document.getElementById('entries');
//   }

You should now be able to print all items loaded (in the Expanded View). You have to scroll down to load items, so scroll down as far as you want, then click the Print Button.

If you scroll down so that 60 entries are loaded, it will print 60 full text items. If 100 entries are loaded, 100 will be printed. For one feed, I found I could go back all the way to December 2006!

You can easily reverse these changes if you want to return the script to its default behaviour.

The Final Word

This is just a simple hack, but it makes my life easier. Now I can print full text entries in Google Reader, going back as far as I like, so I can catchup with my reading away from the computer. I know not many people want to do this, but if it can help even a few, I’ll be happy.

Tags: feed readers, firefox extensions, google reader, greasemonkey, hacks