Need Advice HELP web site printing

[residuals]

I recently designed a site for a furniture company. It is a catalog style site displaying the products and prices. My client wanted the products pages to print out on 1 page.

I designed the site to print off one page, as it did on my computer. Now that the site is done, my client can't get the site to print out on 1 page, it seems to cut the page in half vertically. It prints fine off of Internet Explorer on my computer and a few others, it seems to print out differently off of every computer/browser.

I told my client that every browser is different and it will never print out exactly the same off of every single computer. Client will not listen, he persists in telling me that what I am saying isn't true. Not sure what to do here, very, very, very frustrated.

[ezdropshipper_webmaster]

[/quote]
...he persists in telling me that what I am saying isn't true.[/quote]

I feel your pain; I go thru that sort of thing all the time. What might help is talking to your client about providing PDF's for printing.

HTML was never really meant to be a print formatting language; PDF's are.

[Conficio]

Hi there,
please provide a URL to see your site and code. Shooting blind is not very helpful and makes it close to impossible you will get good advice.

K<o>

[freddieb]

Printing a Web page depends on the browser and the page setup. Mostly Internet Explorer margins are set too wide to print a 800 x 600 Web page. Your client either needs to print in Landscape or change the page margins. I get this all the time from clients who initially tell me that I've designed the pages wrong 'cos they don't print properly. I try to tell them that Web pages were designed for looking at, not printing!

I think the IE default printed page margins are a hangover from the old 640 x 480 resolution. I haven't tried printing pages in Firefox or Opera to see what their margins are set at. Ah, the default page setup in Mozilla is to print in landscape, which is what you'd definitely need for 1024 site and most 800 x 600.

Tell your client that what you're saying is true, it depends on the margins that are set in the browser and the Portrait/Landscape settings.

[type0]

Use CSS to help create printable pages. You can designate print only (or not) elements on your pages. For example, you can remove your header, left margin & footer and only have it print the body. Check out this link:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/

and/or do a search on "css print". You'll find tons of info on the subject.

[markrchisholm]

As said above, css are the way forward.

Basically, you need to design another css for print as well as screen.ie.

<link href="components/text1.css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen">
<link href="components/text2.css" rel="stylesheet" media="print">

There are lots of other media you can specify css for as well, mobile and TV just to mention a few.

The proper way of writing a css for 'print' is to use type setting measurements as apposed to screen measurements (pt as apposed to px), this way you will be able to get html to print out on paper exactly as you want it.

But the cheat way is to 'zoom everything out' by simply adding a zoom value to the body tag in your print css. 0.8 should be enough if your page is around 780px wide, like this...

body { zoom:0.8}

[DrTandem1]

I had a client complain about the same thing. I produced PDFs for printing and also links to Word docs, but he wasn't happy. He simply wanted to print from the screen. As did you, I explained the technicalities of printing a web page to no avail. Finally, I simply made the damn page to fit HIS browser so HE could print it. He was then satisfied.

[ezdropshipper_webmaster]

Originally Posted by DrTandem1

I simply made the damn page to fit HIS browser so HE could print it. He was then satisfied.

*rofl!*
I've certainly been there! Some folks are just unreasonable, and adhere the old business rules:
1) the boss is always right
2) if you feel different, remember rule (1)

Using CSS to set up seperate printing defaults IS a good way to handle it; doggone if I didn't forget that.

I'm beginning to feel like an old computer; the RAM's giving out, I think.

[wsmeyer]

I'm a bit of a CSS newbie so don't bash me to hard if I'm wrong :) but can't you wrap the whole page inside a div id="printer" then in your CSS set that div to a width suitable for printing with media type as print ??

In my newbie head it seems this should work provided your site scales properly to a width narrow enough to print.

William.

[cooper]

ezdropshipper_webmaster is right, PDF is the only true way to control a printed page. HTML and CSS can get you really close but you just can't control all the variables that a user could have on his/her system when it comes to printing off a web site.

I would recommend a downloadable / printable brochure as a PDF. Otherwise, you will find yourself in a never-ending battle to conform your web pages to everyone's individual systems.