How wide of a table will reliably print?

Given typical browser/computer settings

[treeline]

Hi,

I have some data tables that a lot of info needs to be squeezed into, so I want them to be as wide as possible. People often print these out to use for reference and it's unrealistic for me to expect them to find and reset their print settings. I'd like the screen and print versions to be as similar as possible. There's no graphics involved, only standard fonts and sizes.

How many pixels (other measure?) wide can I get away with? 680? 700? another figure? I've reset my print settings so many times in every program that finding normal is tough, plus it seems that different systems and printers have varied defaults. I've already crammed as much in as tight as I can and still be readable, so just letting it auto-adjust doesn't seem promising to me.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

[jessejump]

620px would print OK if people had left and right 1" margins.
Browsers print at 96 ppi.

Try it and see.

[pageoneresults]

For print settings, I'd set the width of the table at 100% and give it a margin:auto; setting. That way the table will scale to fit whatever their settings are.

Anything that is fixed (like table widths) when users are printing creates issues depending on their print settings. A custom print style sheet is definitely in order if you have tabular data that needs to print in its entirety without being cut off.

[monkeythumpa]

72 dpi is the lowest common denominator for web so if you have to hard code the width and want the largest reach don't go wider than 550px. You can get this number by multiplying the web's dpi by the printable area of your page.

This is really only important for positioning and images, text will print at the maximum resolution of the printer so it is best to set your width to 100% whenever possible.