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I am not sure if my question suits this forum, I hope someone can help me with this.
I am having problems with the font colors and how they are printed.
I have a page with a blue background (using layers). The font colors used are white and yellow. When I select "print preview" from the "File menu" the text with color white are displayed in grey and the text with color yellow in brown!?
Anybody knows a reference where I can find which colors to use to get the correct font color (white and yellow) when printing the page out on paper? Is it possible anyway to print out in white?
This is part of a database system and this particular page is used to print out flyers for each indivudual record. Correct font color is important.
thanks,
Safra
Color management when printing from a browser is a world of chaos. Netscape is crazier than Explorer, but neither one works the way your intuition assumes, partly because everyone's system is different and the browser has to make assumptions and often does this poorly.
The one observation I've read over and over is that light print on a dark background is a problem when printing from browsers. As far as I know, getting good colors not as easy as picking combinations from a "safe printing" chart in the same way that you can pick web-safe colors for screen display.
One good bet using black text on a white background (yes, that's boring, but it does save ink!) Keeping the text darker than the background is essential for printing sanity.
You also may get better results using a "true" background, rather than a colored layer -- and declaring colors with stylesheets rather than inline FONT tags.
I tried using style sheets for the font colors. Unfortunately with the same result as with using common font tags.
I ended up using layers for the blue background because no matter whether using a background color or blue backgound image they both will not be printed (at least not in IE!). I found that when you put the image (a blue pixel) in a layer with both the height and width set to 100% it will be printed!
After experimenting with a lot of colors it seems that darker colors look pretty similar when printed out while lighter colors tend to be printed darker.
Unfortunately it is not my choice to use these colors (blue and yellow).
So, I quess there is not much I can do?
Safra
The printing of page background colors is generally a setting under the user's "Internet Options." It's under the "Advanced" tab, at least for IE. The default is to not print the background. Depending on the background, that can eat up a lot of ink. If it's not critical to appearance, why not create a "Printer Friendly" version that's black on white as tedster suggested. Just put a link on the page saying "Printer Friendly Version" with an identical copy of the content less the color. It also doubles as a good Accessible version for the visually impaired.
Unfortunately the only purpose for the page I am talking about is to print it out and use the print as leaflets in offices for customers that's why a true representation of the colors is so important.
Thanks for the reply
This may be obvious, though I just thought of it when reading your reply, but why don't you use colored paper?
