Last modified: 2013-05-22 18:12:40 UTC
When using the option printable=yes, "UI stuff" like editsection links are hidden via skins/common/wikiprintable.css: /* Hide ugly UI stuff */ #quickbar, #topbar, #footer, #siteNotice, .editsection, .toctoggle { display: none; } This means that they are not displayed - but they are still present. If a user tries to copy MediaWiki content to his favorite word processor or text editor, the hidden stuff gets visible. I think that happens quite often, for example when users don't want to print a whole Wikipedia article, but just some specific sections. (Of course you can do funny jokes with a print-out copy that has edit-links on it ("hey, strange, this edit link does not work, the page must be semi-protected or something..."), but doesn't really have a use). I don't know whether it's the web browser's job to fix this, or MediaWiki's job, but I think it should be fixed.
The "printable version" link is just the page with the print stylesheet applied on screen; the link only exists because people aren't used to print style sheets being automatically applied at print time.
