The internet is not only used by people who like to store their media or connect with friends through social networking sites; it is also a great source of information and knowledge. Major newspapers and magazines have their online versions up as websites. These are accessible versions of their paper versions. There is only drawback: the extra things.

When you read a newspaper or magazine, the text is easily viewable and you can get the information you want quickly. However on the website of the same magazine you will find many advertisements and a layout that is not best suited for reading conveniently. A tool that solves this problem is “Fit to Print”.

Fit to Print is an extension for Google Chrome that makes it easier to read online articles of a number of reputable newspapers / magazines. The supported sites include nytimes.com, boston.com, thenation.com, washingtonpost.com, and alternet.org.

The extension sits neatly on your address bar. Clicking the extension turns it on / off. When you reach an article link on one of the supported sites, you are automatically taken to its print version which is much friendlier to read.

Here is the normal view of a recent article on nytimes.com:

And here is the print view:

(* The article can be read here.)

As you can see the print version is much easier to read than the ‘glossy’ version.