Web Design in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5. Printing from the Web

The Web is undeniably an amazing resource for information, but it’s not the most comfortable nor portable of reading environments. For this reason, many people print web pages to read away from their desks or to file for later use. The ability to print the contents of the window has been built into browsers from the beginning. Over the years, we’ve seen some advancement for controlling printouts, both from the browser application itself as well as in authoring languages such as Cascading Style Sheets. In addition, the Web has proven to be an effective delivery device for printed documents in the form of PDF (Portable Document Format) files.

Browser Print Mechanisms

All graphical browsers have basic print and page setup controls that interface with the printer the same as any other application. In the Page Setup dialog box, users can generally select whether the page should print in portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal) format and specify how many copies to print.

Internet Explorer goes beyond the simple print button by giving user more fine-tuned controls for printouts. Its Print Preview feature (introduced in Version 4.5 on the Mac and in 5.5 for Windows) shows how the web page will look when it’s printed out. Within the Print Preview dialog box, users can select whether they want to add headers and footers with the URL and other page information, whether images print, and whether background and text colors should be preserved. The page ...