Cloud-Based Printing for Mobile Devices

Consumers are increasingly using their smart phones to view web pages. However, there is no native operating system support for printing these web pages. We propose to overcome two barriers to printing from mobile devices - the inability to connect and transmit to a printer and the typically poor format of printed web pages. Our system includes a client component that causes the web browser to upload the page (as a URL reference for public pages or the DOM content for private pages) to a cloud service that extracts the content and formats it for printing. We transfer the print-ready content to the HP CloudPrint service and leverage its ability to locate printers and transmit print jobs. We have built a working system the uses iPhones and Windows Mobile devices clients, but the system can be extended to include other clients.