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Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / CSS / September 2004Screen vs. print
Is there a good how-to and/or example of a simple way to have a web page look decent on both screen (in most browsers) and in print? The example in the W3C CSS manual does NOT do it.  SignatureWes Groleau Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to? -- Clarence Darrow > Is there a good how-to and/or example of > a simple way to have a web page look decent > on both screen (in most browsers) and in print? > > The example in the W3C CSS manual does NOT do it. Simply having a decent print stylesheet generally works. Signatureeric www.ericjarvis.co.uk "live fast, die only if strictly necessary" >>Is there a good how-to and/or example of >>a simple way to have a web page look decent [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Simply having a decent print stylesheet generally works. Then I guess mine (and the W3C example) is not decent. Thanks for clearing that up. Who's the professor for my next class? SignatureWes Groleau ----------- Daily Hoax: http://www.snopes2.com/cgi-bin/random/random.asp >>> Is there a good how-to and/or example of >>> a simple way to have a web page look decent [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Who's the professor for my next class? OK, so now you've clarified that you understand print style sheets. What do you mean by "look decent"? Give us a URL and some thoughts on what you're trying to achieve. Note that most browsers' printing functionality is quite limited. SignatureMark. http://tranchant.plus.com/ > OK, so now you've clarified that you understand print style sheets. What > do you mean by "look decent"? Give us a URL and some thoughts on what > you're trying to achieve. touché OK, I guess "decent" is rather vague. I guess just having all the text on the paper instead of running off the right edge would be nice for starters. Apparently "17 cm" is bigger than 8.5 inches to both IE 6 and NS 7 Safari does seem to print on the page, but pretty close to the edge, even though I've currently specified a width of 11cm for printing. If I could just get the #$%^&#$%^ thing to act like it's not being completely ignored, then I'd be able to tweak things. I changed it to 11 cm, cleared the cache, cleared the history, hit print again, and no change! I copied the CSS to a different file, referenced it from a new copy of the web page (different name, surfed to it, and tried that. No change! Which is why I was hoping for a _working_ example to start from. I didn't want to bug you guys for every little detail. But, if anyone does want to look, here it is: http://groleau.freeshell.org/bad-CSS.html SignatureWes Groleau Free Genealogical Lookups: http://groleau.freeshell.org/ref/lookups.shtml > I guess just having all the text on the paper instead of > running off the right edge would be nice for starters. IME, this is usually a symptom of a fixed-width layout that doesn't adapt gracefully to the available display area. Just because you're providing a print style sheet doesn't mean you know the size of the paper, the width of the printer-enforced margins, the width of the browser-enforced margins, the size of the font, etc. > http://groleau.freeshell.org/bad-CSS.html The URL of an HTML document that uses this style sheet would be helpful. But just looking at the CSS, it seems my initial impression was right. SignatureDarin McGrew, mcgrew@stanfordalumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/ Web Design Group, darin@htmlhelp.com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/ "Predictions are difficult, especially about the future." - Casey Stengel > IME, this is usually a symptom of a fixed-width layout that doesn't adapt > gracefully to the available display area. Just because you're providing a > print style sheet doesn't mean you know the size of the paper, the width of > the printer-enforced margins, the width of the browser-enforced margins, > the size of the font, etc. No, I don't know the size of the paper for everybody, but I aimed it at 8.5 x 11 paper (99% of US printers), by saying 17 cm. Not saying that's the ideal way to go, but I thought it would be a good place to start. But the two most common browsers both run the text off the edge a little. Then I changed it to 11 cm and netscape changed nothing. And the font face and size are specified, though Internet Explorer seemed to think that when I changed width I made a mistake--it changed the font size instead! >>http://groleau.freeshell.org/bad-CSS.html > > The URL of an HTML document that uses this style sheet would be helpful. > But just looking at the CSS, it seems my initial impression was right. Almost all of them on the site, e.g., http://groleau.freeshell.org/ (Though in many of them, you can't see the "run-off" because it only shows on the longest lines.) SignatureWes Groleau "A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument." -- Ron Allen I wrote: >> The URL of an HTML document that uses this style sheet would be helpful. >> But just looking at the CSS, it seems my initial impression was right. > Almost all of them on the site, e.g., http://groleau.freeshell.org/ > > (Though in many of them, you can't see the "run-off" because it > only shows on the longest lines.) FWIW, I got several 404 Not Found responses. Anyway, using http://groleau.freeshell.org/education/K201/ as a test case, I saw the clipping of the right edge when I configured my browser to use 1cm print margins, but not when I configured my browser to use 0.5cm print margins. So your page can cope with a display area that's about 20.5cm wide, but not with a display area that's about 19.5cm wide. So I'm back to my original suggestion: Don't assume that you know how wide the available display area is, even in a print style sheet. And you should probably fix some of the CSS errors reported by http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ SignatureDarin McGrew, darin@TheRallyeClub.org, http://www.TheRallyeClub.org/ A gimmick car rallye is not a race, but a fun puzzle testing your ability to follow instructions. Upcoming gimmick car rallye in Silicon Valley: Monstah Mash 2004 (Saturday, October 2) > FWIW, I got several 404 Not Found responses. Website used to be elsewhere. Haven't finished moving it. Former host required a not-so-convenient directory structure, so some of the relative links are broken. > Anyway, using http://groleau.freeshell.org/education/K201/ as a test case, > I saw the clipping of the right edge when I configured my browser to use > 1cm print margins, but not when I configured my browser to use 0.5cm print > margins. So your page can cope with a display area that's about 20.5cm > wide, but not with a display area that's about 19.5cm wide. Even though it's specified to be 17 cm -- excuse me, 11 cm wide. This is what I find so confusing. > So I'm back to my original suggestion: Don't assume that you know how wide > the available display area is, even in a print style sheet. Yeah, well, I'm still trying to grasp the implications of that. > And you should probably fix some of the CSS errors reported by > http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ :-) I suppose I should--but you should have seen how many errors it had before I modified it, i.e., when it was still EXACTLY as put in the W3C document ! :-) SignatureWes Groleau After the christening of his baby brother in church, Jason sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car. His father asked him three times what was wrong. Finally, the boy replied, "That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, and I wanted to stay with you guys." >>> Is there a good how-to and/or example of >>> a simple way to have a web page look decent [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Who's the professor for my next class? Hope I'm not detecting snippiness! When's a specific question going to be posed, hopefully coupled with a URL of what didn't work for you? While you're at it, define "decent". Do you want a similar layout as screen on the printout, do you want a different but suitable rendering? Spartanicus' suggestred link http://www.codestyle.org/css/media/print-BrowserSummary.shtml is really good, look that over to eliminate any obvious browser ignorance through how you state the rule. > >>Is there a good how-to and/or example of > >>a simple way to have a web page look decent [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Who's the professor for my next class? They are all sitting in the senior common room waiting fort you to actually decide what class you want to take. It is possible to make print stylehseets that work well, without knowing what problem you have with the w3c print stylesheet there's no way of suggesting how to get around the problems other than to simply do it right. Posting to Usenet 1.02 is the queue over there -> Signatureeric www.ericjarvis.co.uk "live fast, die only if strictly necessary" >Is there a good how-to and/or example of >a simple way to have a web page look decent >on both screen (in most browsers) and in print? > >The example in the W3C CSS manual does NOT do it. Beware of buggy UA media support, some information here: http://www.codestyle.org/css/media/print-BrowserSummary.shtml Note that there are media bugs that are not/cannot be expressed in a table like the above. SignatureSpartanicus > Beware of buggy UA media support, some information here: > http://www.codestyle.org/css/media/print-BrowserSummary.shtml That looks like it will be very helpful. Thanks. Maybe I should distribute my document(s) on a bootable CD with Apache and Opera 7.11 pre-configured. :-) Or put the whole thing in PDF. :-) Problem with PDF is that I wanted to carry a subset of the site in print and have it look sufficiently like the web version that someone going after the missing parts wouldn't get lost even if they were inexperienced with the web. Having two PDFs, one with pages left out is just as bad as having to maintain screen and printer versions of every web page. Plus PDFs, being monolithic, offer a loading time problem. SignatureWes Groleau Heroes, Heritage, and History http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau/ |
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