displaying printed reports over web

how to implement paging?

[RossWal]

Hi all.

I need to make what would normally be printed reports available over the web. So far, I'm just wrapping everything in a <pre> tag, rendering a bunch of paper pages in each web page. Now I'm thinking of lettiung users pick a page number and/or click Next/Prev page buttons. Possibly displaying one page at a time, possibly the whole thing but auto scrolling. I'm toying with using frames to keep the buttons at the top of the web page, or maybe inserting links at the top of each paper page.

Anyone with thoughts on a good approach? If you've seen a good implementation where I might get some ideas, I'd appreciate a sticky.

Thanks,
Ross

[DrDoc]

I've found it best to have pages no longer than the window height * 2. Then keep navigation at the top and bottom.

<<First <Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next> Last>>

Text and content goes here...

<<First <Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next> Last>>

How many pages are we talking?

[DrDoc]

The actual pagination could easily be solved with Perl or PHP...

[drbrain]

What about CSS paged media?

[webmasterworld.com ]
[w3.org ]

[RossWal]

Thanks for the tips. Paged Media CSS is the way for me! I googled up some javascript to automatically launch print preview for IE.

Quick, easy, & cool! Thanks!

<edit>Paged Media that is</edit>

[DrDoc]

Oh, I thought you just wanted paginated navigation, not for print... oops ;)