It’s available as a Firefox extension and as a bookmarklet that works in any browser. Through a simple set of keyboard shortcuts (press h to see them), you can manipulate any item on a web page – the most useful functionality being to remove elements, or to isolate them.

How is this useful? It can be invaluable when printing content from the web.

Invariably, the information you want to print is surrounded by ‘computer administrative debris‘, to use a phrase coined by Edward Tufte. Menus, comments, headers, footers, the list goes on – all of this is useful when you’re navigating through a website, but it’s mostly redundant when you’re reading it on paper. Some sites provide print stylesheets that optimize the page for printing, but many don’t – and that’s where Aardvark comes in handy. You can just highlight the section of the page that you’re interested in, isolate it (therefore removing all other elements from the page), and you’ve got a very printable and readable page.

It’s a bit tricky to describe in text, so the best thing to do is give it a spin yourself!

Firefox extension: http://karmatics.com/aardvark/
Bookmarklet: http://karmatics.com/aardvark/bookmarklet.html