Designing for Printing

[webinator]

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.

[Egg Bramhill]

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

[jaydear]

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.

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics

[handrawn]

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

[webinator]

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

[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.

[webinator]

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.

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.

[pauland]

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

[webinator]

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

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