Printing website

[Coastguard]

Does anyone know how to print a published Xara website to paper or PDF without it printing to the right of the page.
I have had a look at some of the sites in the gallery and they seem to do the same.

My main site is an accommodation advertising site and some people wish to print a hard copy ( www.stagnes.co ).

Anyone else seen this problem?

Regards
Hmcoastguard

[Coastguard]

oops website should be www.stagnes.com

[Egg Bramhill]

Welcome Coastguard, hope your keeping a sharp lookout for shipwrecks up there in Dewsbury

One of your problems is that websites are created to display on computer monitors, tablets and mobile phones etc. These have no fixed size unlike Word documents etc that are usually destined for printing on fixed sized A4 or US Letter paper.

Browsers can do a good estimation of resizing the site to a fixed paper size but they are all compromises and also vary between browsers.

You best bet would be to copy your site/page content, fit it into an A4 page/s and create a pdf file from Xara. You can then add a button to each page/your site and allow the visitor load and print a pdf file that you know will print perfectly in every case. Sounds like a lot of work but it's not once you grasp the concept. (you can even offer colour or B&W versions)

[Cloud]

Perhaps I'm not getting this right but why not do a screen grab and then either print that or convert it to pdf, google do a very good utility (google screen capture) for chrome which captures the whole page (not just the visible part) and saves as a png.

[Coastguard]

Hi

Both good ideas, and I have thought about several ways to do this.

The problem is that some customers require changes to their entries on a regular basis and I would have to re-do a PDF on a regular basis, and although I listed one of the sites I have 9 sites in total with slightly different info.

Several years ago I used a different program for constructing my sites and these would print direct from the browser, saving a lot of extra work.

I love Xara and as such will have to live with the problems (even slight ones), I think that the pro's out weigh the con's.

I was just hoping that someone may have had an easy solution.

[LIU]

If this is what you mean there are several sites that convert to a PDF I have used them and the results are good.
http://www.web2pdfconvert.com/
link 2

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Skech,

Perhaps I'm not getting this right but why not do a screen grab and then either print that or convert it to pdf

No reason at all apart from the fact that you know how to do that and why you're doing that. Unfortunately the casual visitor doesn't. Thus the OP's question.

[Coastguard]

Hi

I use PDF converters for various different thing, and I could convert and put a download link on the pages, the problem still exists that printing as a PDF still leaves a large white area on the left and loses some info from the right.

Still not the easy ideal way as I would have to make several time consuming changes every time I edit a page.

So still looking for that easy solution.

To be honest I still think it is something in the coding, just unable to see it.

We have a lot of clever people in the Xara community and I am sure that I am not the only one that has come across this.

[Coastguard]

Hi LIU

Just tried web2pdfconverter and got to say it does a good job of fixing the problem I have so at least this is a fix that might help although it would be nice if customers could print direct to their printer from the internet without me having to play with it.

Thanks for the info.

[Egg Bramhill]

It would appear that a lot of the large left margin is created by having the web page centred in the browser. If you use the "Left Aligned Page" in the tweekset the problem disappears. Then the visitor just needs to hit "shrink to fit".

Personally I still think creating a button linked pdf file is by far the simplest solution. Unfortunately WD9 doesn't have an export as pdf (Another good reason to upgrade to Designer Pro). You could use something like Primo PDF though in the meantime. Simply create a layer named "Printing Content" and place all items you wish to be printed on this layer, so the buttons and header graphic etc remain on the Mouse Off layer as you wouldn't want these printed.

Then it's a simple matter of every time you change the pages content within the printing content layer, just copy and paste the printing layer into an A4 page and quickly adjust content to suit and export as a pdf overwriting the previous pdf of that name and ftp to your site. All done within Xara, no need to go anywhere else. (Your page content would be best if the content was slightly less wide to fit into an A4 page and allow for a margin).