On Oct 19, 2004, at 1:52, Calle Hedberg wrote:
Secondly, the posting from Will Ross re printing reminded me of a major problem we've had with certain web apps: The lack of proper control over final lay-out when you print stuff over several pages.
Web printing is notoriously difficult, of course, due to the fact that HTML is so oriented towards display. Fixed web pages often have "printer friendly" versions, but this is more tricky with dynamically created web reports etc.
Calle,
Web printing 'was' notorious difficult for quite awhile, from the developer's point of view as well as the user's. The primary reason was at first the lack of tools at the disposition of the webscreen designer, then later, the lack of faithful implementation of CSS (cascading style sheets) standards by the browser makers (ie, IE).
This technical hurdle doesn't really exist anymore since (most) standards are fairly well integrated now and new ones have evolved rapidly to keep pace with needs. (There is no technical reason why a printer-friendly version of a dynamic page can't be generated with the 'media="print" tag in a CSS header coupled with an appropriate style sheet).
It's figuring out the best way to design for the user's ease and various needs that still needs to be better understood by techies.
Denny Adelman
