CSS Print

Printing with the Browser

Index

Welcome to the printing with CSS and JavaScript i.e. printouts using the browser, how to by Poised Solutions.

This site has been created to augment a Commerce Zine (Poised Commerce), the techniques explored and used here will be used in the live Zine.

In the past I have produced hard copy documents in a variety of ways:

And whilst the above applications and environments can get the job done, they either lack accuracy, enforce a toolchain, or sends me scurrying to various manuals.

The toolchain for document creation most web developers are at home with is the browser toolchain i.e. HTML, CSS and JavaScript. CSS has evolved to the point that accuracy can be achieved, JavaScript with the DOM allows pages to be rearranged client side, and HTML is just a very good simple text markup system.

As the web was evolving and especially with commerce related sites, there was always a need to create a hard copy output of a web page. The techniques used to achieve these hard copies was a varied one, and most did not involve the use of CSS and JavaScript - CSS just did not work reliably enough back then.

Other methods of producing documents from web page data are :

The postscript and PDF methods are the normal mechanism, but there is an added overhead of changing the toolchain.

The OLE method using ActiveX is not advised either on the client or server side, it is prone to error, and is not particularly cross platform compliant.

Generally printing is required in a commerce site to describe an order to either the client or to the fulfillment team. Fulfillment often needs the orders automatically printed, though nowadays PDAs could be used, a hardcopy still acts as a good visual reminder that an order needs to be fulfilled.

Hard copy (printed) reports are often desired, quite a few people still prefer to read off paper. Being able to print a good looking report directly from the web page is generally preferable to the copy and paste techniques some are forced to use to get a stylish looking report.

Site Map

Index
Overview of CSS Print Howto site, introduction and sitemap, this page.
Page Sizes
A look at the different page sizes and how to account for page margins.
Stylesheets
Tips and tricks to create a dual document. CSS file layout, spliting and combining media types.
Page Breaks
Page breaking, the holy grail of printing from the browser.
Automatic
How to print documents automatically, for mail shots and on demand printing.

Links

Index  |   Page Sizes  |   Stylesheets  |   Page Breaks  |   Automatic

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