Web page printing versus viewing

printing versus viewing web pages

[JNaik]

Hello,

Please check out the following page:

[cititle.com...]

The page (form) looks fine when you view it online, but if you do Print
Preview or print it out, most of the field alignments are lost or off by a
few spaces. Is there something I need to do to print the exact layout of the
form that a user sees online? If I try to align it according to the printed
version then online version looks messy and not aligned. How can I design
the layout of this form so that the online version as well as the printed
version both are aligned well and look the same?

This web page uses Ariel fonts 10/12 points in size with 3C3C3C font color and some use bold style. Also my browser is the latest version of IE (6...). I am facing this alignment off problem with any or every machine it's viewed/printed on.

Thanks Much!

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, JNaik. A mod will no doubt delete the URL (violates the TOS here), but your question is fairly generic. Printing an HTML page is often dicey and will not fit the page well, will change spacing, etc.

The most common solution is to link to a page with very simple formatting and no unnecessary graphics. The use of multiple style sheets is also a solution, although I'm not sure to what extent all browsers support this.

Linking to a PDF file works, too.

[JNaik]

Thanks, rogerd, for your reply. Sorry, about posting the URL of my page, as I am new and didn't really look into the "TOS," but will keep this in mind the next time post on this forum.

I have no graphics, except one (company logo). It's a fairly simple (long, however) form, which saves the contents to a SQL server database as well as e-mailing it to a couple of recipients - this is the ASP part, which works fine. I didn't know that it's so complicated to create a simple form that looks the same when viewed or printed! So PDF is the only solution to preserv the layout or keep the online version and printed version consistent in design/layout?

Thanks for your input.

Jayna

[txbakers]

I print regularly from the browser for my application, and it does run into problems, especially with margins and different OS and browsers.

Netscape on the Mac does not allow the user to remove headers and footers. All printers have their own default minimum margins, which can wreak havoc.

I also figured out a way to print directly to mailing labels from the browser, which is very slick when it works.

You can do it with absolute position CSS and judicious and careful use of fixed width tables.

But be forewarned that there will always be some who can't print.

there is a wonderful little program called pdfFactory pro available from www.fineprint.com which installs like a printer driver, allowing the user to "print" diretly to PDF, which can avoid some of the problems. I'm considering providing this to my clients that have problems printing.

I've also figured out a way to print multiple forms (one big HTML page containing multiple instances of a form,) but again it's dicey.

Sometimes, with clients who have really big top and bottom margins, I've had them set the page setup to legal and print on letter, which works. Kind of a cheap fix, but I tell them to get a new printer if they want to do lots of printing.