Web Page Printing

Are we creating pages that don't print well?

[jbinbpt]

An interesting read in today's NY Times [nytimes.com].

It is an interview with Vyomesh I. Joshi, the senior vice president in charge of Hewlett-Packard’s printing division, talking about the trends HP sees.

Newer users are printing fewer pages.

Do you test print at all?
Are you happy with what prints?
Use style sheets for printing?

[abbeyvet]

I use a style sheet for printing, test it and happy with it.

The trick is remembering to update it when you add something to the main style sheet, and I admit to falling down there at times with resulting odd print output.

[rocknbil]

I do spot tests but the hard truth is they are right, most people don't print web pages. Why bother? The content will change tomorrow, and if I found it today, I'll find it tomorrow. Exceptions might be bits of content that needs to be taken away from the computer, like maps, shipping labels, and schedules.

Peope are also more judicious about what they print, too. The cost of their inks and paper is getting rediculous.

We set up my step-d with a new comp and printer. It's been about 4 months. She hasn't printed a single page.

[buckworks]

I don't even have a printer in my office. If I need to print something I email the link to my husband and he prints it for me. That only happens a few times a year.

[tedster]

More from the article - I found this part worthy of note:

Last month, in a small step toward making sure that home printers keep churning, H.P. bought a small company, Tabblo, a privately held developer of Web-based software in Cambridge, Mass.

Tabblo’s software creates templates that reorganize the photos and text blocks on a Web page to fit standard sizes of paper. H.P. wants to make the software a standard by making it ubiquitous, like Adobe’s Flash and Reader or Sun Microsystems’ Java.

NY Times article [nytimes.com]