1 Print original page

I think it’s also important to be able to print the original page. I often take screenshots just because the print looks totally different to the browser view. If you need to print out the original page, for example for documentation purposes, there should be better ways to taking a screenshot.

posted at 04:30 am on October 24, 2006 by Mark Schütz

2 Expectations and the back button

My problem with this example is that it shares the same user experiences as the existing (horrible) multi-page printer friendly method. Since it shares the same experience (click on a link, see the page change, print), the user expects to return to the content the same way, by hitting the back button.

I think you need to build the printer friendly version the same way that you would a good AJAX interface. Finding a way to allow readers to bookmark the page in its current state, as well as allowing them to use the back and forward buttons.

posted at 04:45 am on October 24, 2006 by Gary Love

3 Untitled

Gary, I totally agree that the back button should always behave as expected. Also not all web designers like that (I’m not sure about the users) I myself would prefer to open to printer friendly view in a new window.

posted at 04:55 am on October 24, 2006 by Michael Balles

4 Untitled

As an author, I’d prefer to ween people off print previews by having the print preview link display a message explaining that the page is already printer friendly.

But as a user, I like print versions, not for printing, but for reading an article with less crap on the screen.

As an Opera user, I like print stylesheets even more, because I can easily switch into a print preview mode.

But I digress – I can see the value of this approach, but also agree on the need for expected Back button behaviour. I didn’t pick up on the “Return to the existing page” link, so I reloaded to get the page “working” again. Other users might have felt they had lost their navigation options.

posted at 08:10 am on October 24, 2006 by Nathan Jones

5 Clean Pages

I think the best option is to keep your page clean enough that there is no need for a printer friendly view.

posted at 08:16 am on October 24, 2006 by Sven Ruf

6 Server-side versions

I came up with a PHP version of this a little while ago, though my version doesn’t automatically launch the print dialog:

Quick and dirty print preview

That’s all.

posted at 08:49 am on October 24, 2006 by paul haine

7 Good idea, but not optimal

I like the general idea, but I think the JavaScript is too complicated and it breaks the back button. What I would do is perhaps just to let the “print preview” link go to the same page, but with some ‘flag’ set in the URL that the JavaScript picks up on and thus switches the stylesheet. Perhaps.

The problem here isn’t really in the technology or the way we develop our sites, but in how little our users know about their browsers. So perhaps the best idea is just to educate them in how they can do print preview and to say that “this page is already printer friendly”? I’ve seen some sites do that; you click the “printer friendly version” link and what you get is just a message that says “hit page is printer friendly” with perhaps a call to ‘window.print()’ afterwards.

If users just get used to that behaviour instead of the old separate print document behaviour, we won’t need to create solutions like this at all. And that would benefit both users and developers.

posted at 10:24 am on October 24, 2006 by Asbjørn Ulsberg

8 Educating Users

Asbjørn, I don’t know about your experience but I gave up on educating users. On our sites we usually have 70% of new users, 30% frequent users. So all you can do is educate 30%. I think you have to find a solution that leads to a resonable soilution for 100% of the users. For me that’s providing a printer frindly view in an extra window, although the original view is already printer friendly. So educated users can print right away, the “normal” users open the printer friendly view and then do the print.

posted at 10:38 am on October 24, 2006 by Eugen Bopp

9 Keeping it lean

I think the best option is to keep your page clean enough that there is no need for a printer friendly view.

I disagree with that entirely. Many pages I have written include sidebar navigation. If you don’t have an alternate stylesheet for printing, that takes up a lot of paper, effectively reducing the width of your page by maybe a quarter, which on a longer document could result in needing several additional pages. That’s particularly true on a page with complex navigation.

Navigation elements that make sense in context make no sense on a printed page, and waste paper and ink. There’s no cost to adding more space or text on screen, which means we can have great fun spreading our webpages all over the place, but there is a cost when printing, so most users will want the paper copy to be as concise as possible.

You also have to consider font style and colour – what is appropriate on the screen is not necessarily ideal on paper. By having a separate stylesheet, you can optimise your page for both media rather than forcing one to be a compromise.

What I would like to do is to educate users to press the Print Preview button if they are concerned about how the document will print, but I don’t think that’s going to be a successful strategy!

posted at 12:08 pm on October 24, 2006 by Stephen Down

10 Using Javascript

I like the general idea, but I think the JavaScript is too complicated and it breaks the back button. What I would do is perhaps just to let the “print preview” link go to the same page, but with some ‘flag’ set in the URL that the JavaScript picks up on and thus switches the stylesheet. Perhaps.

What I’ve started to do on some of my pages, which are framed, is to have a “print page” link that is contained within document.write, so that only JS-enabled browsers see the link. Except I’ve now found that Opera won’t print just the selected frame, so I need to figure out a way of hiding the script from Opera!

But yes, it just calls the print function rather than doing a preview, but that’s (partly) because I’m too lazy to figure out the best way of doing it. I would tend towards going for a new window, which the author can then control the width of (and on my site, release it from the frameset), rather than a replacement in situ as suggested here, because I do think that too many users would find this confusing and disorientating.

posted at 12:27 pm on October 24, 2006 by Stephen Down