Designing for Printing

Hi folks. I’m a relatively new user of WDP12 and I’m having some difficulties with printing from a web browser. The pages I create don’t seem to want to print the full width of the webpage centered on the full width of the printed page. When print preview is set to “Shrink to Fit”, the left edge of my webpages are shifted toward the center of the printed page in Firefox, and Chrome’s non-adjustable setting does the same. IE11 sometimes does better at this, but sometimes prints a blank first page, with the top of the web page beginning on page 2. In Firefox and IE, I know that I can adjust the printing %, but that’s at the expense of shrinking everything in size. Are there things I need to know about WDP which will help me to produce web pages that print properly from all browsers? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Welcome to TG webinator. This is something I've no experience with but I'm sure more knowledgable members will chip in shortly.

I always have issues printing from browsers. Web pages are designed to be viewed on a screen after all. I think the best solution is to provide a pdf version of the page/s. This gives you artistic control of what is printed: you control the page size and page breaks, you can leave off things that are not relevant to a printed page and everyone gets the same end result on paper. Note that you can still have links to other pages or websites, etc. in a pdf, but you may need to edit them in your pdf software.

Welcome to TalkGraphics

as a user [not a designer] who does a lot of printing from the web, I'd say this is normal - not only is a visual web page often 'not printer friendly' but what happens varies from browser to browser [I use FF, IE, Opera; Chrome not much]

Some sites, eg banking, will provide a link to a 'printer friendly' version of the page - though I can't help you with ways to code this I'm sure someone else can - from experience, PDF which these days seems a fairly standard option and has been suggested, usually works well

Thank you all, for your greetings and your comments. Your suggestions are certainly reasonable alternatives. I guess I’m just dreaming the impossible dream.

Download Nimbus Screenshot and Screencast

8.2.5 for chrome browser. Use grab page etc.. then save to disk and import to the program you want to print in, so lets say designer and then shrink to fit page and print.

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Originally Posted by behzad

Download Nimbus Screenshot and Screencast

8.2.5 for chrome browser. Use grab page etc.. then save to disk and import to the program you want to print in, so lets say designer and then shrink to fit page and print.

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That looks useful, thanks. I was hoping to learn how to design WDP pages in a way that they would print properly from any browser. Sadly, Screenshot wouldn't seem to be of any benefit to visitors who would like to print my website pages, unless they also had it installed.

Webinator, what's on your website that everyone wants to print it? Can we see the URL?

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Originally Posted by pauland

Webinator, what's on your website that everyone wants to print it? Can we see the URL?

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It's not about my website. It's about increasing my knowledge.

I think that you've definitely increased your knowledge.

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Originally Posted by pauland

I think that you've definitely increased your knowledge.

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. . . and that's a good thing. Even though what I was looking for appears not to be possible.

You might also consider that what you want may not always be desirable, either.

For example, white text on a dark background, prints badly on a printer.

On some sites a technique using CSS media queries is used to choose print-friendly colours and layouts, so the printed page will be intentionally different to what is shown in a browser.

Not XWD365P but XDPX has a Page Layout using standard page formats (A4, letter) that act as an on-line PDF.
It handling links and probably most of the web features the whole package already had: http://www.xara.com/uk/designer-pro/features/ and example: http://xaragroup.magix.net/designer-pro/notes/.

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Uniquely Designer Pro can publish your multi-page print document on the web as a single scrollable document - it's easy to view, totally WYSIWYG, and perfect for fast skimming and browsing of long documents or sharing your documents with others, without the bother of PDF. Example web document.

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Try the trial,
Acorn

I'm a bit confused by what your last post was trying to say, Acorn.

The OP wanted the website produced by Xara software to print "correctly", but the print of their Xara site didn't match the online view.

I'm not sure what your last post suggests about that.

@acorn - that sounds like one way to get certain pages up in a print friendly format, assuming you can integrate into a 'normal' website rather than have one that is entirely baseed on a print document?

publish your multi-page print document on the web as a single scrollable document

That's just a supersite, isn't it?

I'm not getting the point here.

an alternative to PDF as in that act as an on-line PDF

how practical that is I can't say - but it is all extra knowledge...

Yes, but what does that actually mean?

I took it to mean that you design as though it was a paper document and it publishes as HTML keeping the layout exactly, so as far as I can see that's nothing new at all.

The OP was concerned about the print result from the web page, so I don't see anything at all that has any effect on this. I don't think the reference to PDF means that the page prints as though it was a PDF, I think it's about the design process which is akin to a PDF or print document.

Well, the OP hasn't offered up a website for our consideration.

The Post Title is "Designing for Print" so generating HTML that renders as A4 pages seems to fit the remit.

For the Xara example, had Xara actually fitted their pages as A4 then the print aspect would be accurate to the web page presentation.

Acorn

Acorn I don't see where Xara says that the web pages will print as seen on the web page, so I didn't follow from your excerpt about Xara how that was a change.

I understand what the OP wants.

It's a real pity that we can't see the website.

It’s not about one particular website of mine. This phenomenon can be seen in most, if not all, of the template based websites in the Xara Website Gallery. For example, McMillanVideo is a very simple page, and if I narrow my browser to the approximate width of the web page, it prints centered on the printed page. If I widen my browser window to fit my 1600x900 laptop screen, however, the webpage is shifted to the right of the printed page. If I do the same on my 1920x1080 monitor, it’s shifted further to the right. This occurs in Firefox, IE11, and Chrome. When set to “shrink to fit” shouldn’t this simple page print the full width of the paper page, minus the margin settings?

Part of the problem is the site is not a paper size (A4, US letter).
If it were designed with a page height of (1122.52px, 1056px) and width of (793.7px, 816px), then I believe you will not get the changes you are experiencing.
In Page Size options, set Paper size to (A4, US Letter), Lock page size and set All pages in the document the same.

Assuming you have gone for a Vertical Supersite to give your site that document feel, all should be good.

You then have to second guess what the user will print onto so you may have to present two versions (A4, US Letter) and advise, when printing to remove the printer option of header and footers and to have no margins.

My A4 test Supersite has pages effectively fixed at 1131px apart in height (20px gapped).

Acorn

I am planning to start a small business in Down Toronto. I wish to get some brochures printed. My brother suggested me Captain Printworks [Link removed by moderator], who provides printing and publishing services. But I found they offer both offset printing and digital printing. I am confused to pick one. Offset is less expensive but digital looks good in print.

Welcome to TG, Arien.

Why not pick up the phone and ask for their advice and an idea of costs?

Welcome to TalkGraphics Arien - Digital printing is like a more sophisticated version of a desktop printing. Usually inkjet printing, but often better detail and more vibrant colors and good for short printing runs. Offset and Letterpress are old established forms of printing and used for printing more items.

I have removed the link from your post as new members are not permitted to add commercial links until they have posted 20-30 times.

Do a Google search on these three types of printing and you will get a lot more information.

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Originally Posted by pauland

For example, white text on a dark background, prints badly on a printer

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especially if as is often the case background printing is disabled
white text on a white background is really hard on the eyes

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Originally Posted by webinator

Are there things I need to know about WDP which will help me to produce web pages that print properly from all browsers?

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in a word, no
it's nothing to do with xara products
its about browsers
the web is a visual medium not a print medium
hence you can print stuff from badly to ok to good to occasionally great
but the same page on a different os or a different browser or different default printer settings its always going to look different
create a 'download the pdf' link for people to be able to save for later and print it out exactly how you want them to see it

Hi Arien if it is a brochure that you want to print as you stated from post #24 design your brochure for print in Xara using one of the standard sizes and there are many different sizes that you could use. To get you more confused there are also many ways that you could fold your brochure which would give your brochure a interesting layout. Content is king here and it is not like a web page where you have a home page and the other pages on your site you're trying to get the viewer to interact with you. In a brochure I have always found that my most successful ones for my clients business were the simple ones, single fold & double sided, (4 page). But most of the clients that used this design shop wanted the standard tri-folded brochure & of course double sided (6 pages) and for most of our clients this brochure for most business there was too much content.

A good guide whither to go digital or offset would be if you wanted to print off more than 2000 brochures then offset would be far more economical than digital. It's between a 1000 and 2000 there is a debate on which one to use so I would really talk to the print shop and get their advice. Also if you are using offset any of your photo that you use will loose some of the picture vibrancy due to the reduced number of colours that can be printed using CMYK colour processing in offset. Here are a few standard brochure folding layouts that are used