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Re: Printer-Friendly and actual printer handling

  • Subject: Re: Printer-Friendly and actual printer handling
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@schestowitz.com>
  • Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 03:09:49 +0100
  • Newsgroups: alt.html
  • Organization: schestowitz.com / Manchester University
  • References: <1121869913.541011.307760@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <dblohj$50g$1@godfrey.mcc.ac.uk> <BF05386F.14D26%dorayme@optusnet.com.au>
  • Reply-to: newsgroups@schestowitz.com
  • User-agent: KNode/0.7.2
dorayme wrote:

>> From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@schestowitz.com>
>> 
>> crjunk@earthlink.net wrote:
>> 
>>> First, let me say that I know that doing something like preventing the
>>> user from changing the font size is never a good thing from a usability
>>> standpoint.
>>> 
>>> Let me explain why I'm trying to do this.  I'm trying to recreate an
>>> online payment invoice that looks very similar to the hard copy invoice
>>> we mail out to our customers.  The user will be able to print out this
>>> invoice from their web browser and mail it in along with their payment.
>>> The web browser printout needs to be similar in size to the invoice we
>>> mail out.  I would prefer to create the invoice as a PDF for the user,
>>> but because of deadline time constraints, I do not have this luxury.
>>> 
>>> I have found examples on how to limit the size of text in IE, but this
>>> solution does not work in FireFox.  Is there a way to "lock" the size
>>> of text in Fireox?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> CR Junk
>> 
>> I don't think you can do that and I think you must never force fonts to
>> have a fixed size. This will stir up an outrage among people whose sight
>> is poorer than yours. Some seniors I know prefer Firefox because of the
>> powerful font scaling support (SHIFT accelarator and CTRL+-). Firefox
>> gives them the 'power' to read pages even when the Web developer is
>> overly adamant.
>> 
>> If you want to generate PDF's on-to-fly, you have a flexible package that
>> you can use. It took me only an hour or two to make an HTML->PDF feature
>> work.
>> 
>> http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archives/2005/07/12/wordpress-and-pdf/
>> 
>> The package is widely used in the Open Source community. Since you can
>> never fight a browser that puts the user in control, you may wish to just
>> add a friendly warning that discourages users from changing the default
>> font size. Also don't forget that pages will be rendered differently on
>> different platforms, browsers and devices.
>> 
>> Roy
> 
>>
> 
> 
> Would there not be a way to simply fix the font size in a stylesheet for
> printing only while yet leaving the screen image free to be seen at
> whatever font size the user finds comfortable?
> 
> dorayme

I would know the answer because I almost never print anything. I imagine the
printer will receive the input in a WYSIWYG fashion, so if print.css is
selected and displayed on the screen, problems will arise. I don't know
what will happen if the browser or O/S is configured to choose print.css
'behind the scenes'. 

Neredbojias actually pointed out a good solution that I hadn't thought of.

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