Hi Dave,
 
> I don't think the question was about stopping the headers/
> footers permanently.  I think it was about suppressing it
> for certain pages only.  I think the options example was
> there more as an example of the effect wanted.

I agree, but the simple fact is that those are set browser-wide and
do *not* provide a means (outside of wrapping your content in some
form of ActiveX object) to strip those headers from a print job.
Since they are options that the user has selected (even by their
ignorance of not changing them), it's against my better judgement
that we, as developers, should strip them off. Changing what amounts
to a 'user preference' isn't the right way to handle it. Further,
HTML isn't a perfect layout mechanism anyway, so stripping off the
header and footer are probably the least of your problems - the page
might be significantly skewed in other ways just by being output as
HTML to paper. PDF is designed for consistency in print - so it's
really the best solution. Even Word doesn't have consistency, and as
'free' as that Word Doc Reader is, I don't know a single person that
has it installed.

*If* IE ever provides us a means to change it via CSS I'll be in
heaven, and I'll be using it myself. Until then, I'll just either
tolerate it or output to PDF (and I **hate** outputting to PDF).


If you have an intranet and would like to be able to control
presentation you could have an ActiveX that instantiates a class
object that stores the previous data from the registry and changes
it on initialize and restores it to their previous values on
terminate. This could be done in like a 50-line VB project. The
registry settings are going to be in the general area of:
  [HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup]

Of course, this assumes that it's an Intranet and you're allowing
ActiveX to run trusted across the network. I hate assumptions.


> (I don't think overriding the user's default headings temporarily
> - even to the extent of blanking them out - should be a worry to
> users.  It's not much different to downloading and printing a
> Word or PDF file - you get the author's headers and footers,
> not your own.  The default settings are there really to provide
> a convenient heading for non-structured printouts, so that users
> can easily remind themselves of where and when the print came
> from.)

Word and PDF both require ActiveX objects for presentation. They can
easily be disabled so the user can control with significant
authority what gets printed on their system. I'm not making excuses
for MS, just noting that the models aren't really that similar. Just
because something is displayed via both IE and PDF doesn't mean it's
really doing the same thing.


> Shawn, you mention outputting the document in PDF for printing.
> This is an interesting option and one I'm not familiar with.
> I use Cute PDF Writer to output Word, Excel, etc documents to
> PDF for storage on web sites for download, but I've never
> investigated getting ASP to cut a report into a PDF file.  I
> will get onto Google and have a look over the weekend, but if
> there is some product or pointer you could kick-start me with,
> I'd be very grateful.

What I've used in the past (and it's been months) was Adobe
"designer" - it was still in Beta when I was using it and I haven't
touched it since. Looks like they're calling it "LiveCycle Designer"
now. Basically you get a specially structured PDF document that you
can assign regions for objects, then you use an XML source or result
to stream the data in and out. ;)
  http://store.adobe.com/products/server/adobedesigner/

It's pretty neat, and provides for digital signatures and stuff
should you ever need to do all that.

Regards,

Shawn K. Hall
http://ReliableAnswers.com/

'// ========================================================
    To see what is in front of one's nose requires a
    constant struggle.
        -- George Orwell




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