[opensuse] problems printing blogs with firefox
Does anybody else have problems printing some sites, especially blogs? I'm talking about sites where it usually turns out that people have used CSS commands like position:absolute or various overlap settings that cause Firefox to print the first page and then run the rest of the text of the bottom of the page. There are usually some blank pages involved as well. It's been a nuisance occasionally but it's getting worse. It seems that some of the major blog sites have this problem, which makes it apply to a lot more things I want to print. It also applies to google translate output. Anybody have a workaround? Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 2010/10/06 14:47 (GMT+0100) Dave Howorth composed:
Does anybody else have problems printing some sites, especially blogs?
I'm talking about sites where it usually turns out that people have used CSS commands like position:absolute or various overlap settings that cause Firefox to print the first page and then run the rest of the text of the bottom of the page. There are usually some blank pages involved as well.
It's been a nuisance occasionally but it's getting worse. It seems that some of the major blog sites have this problem, which makes it apply to a lot more things I want to print. It also applies to google translate output.
Anybody have a workaround?
The problem is not unique to Firefox. The power of CSS is extensive. Incompetence in using it abounds. Most blog authors give no thought that anyone might care to print. Sites more than nominally styled with CSS need either a print this page link and/or a separate print stylesheet, but usually this is overlooked or (often to preserve site branding) ignored. I find what works passably is a separate browser or profile with settings conformed to what web authors assume users use, loading pages to print there, taking screenshots of the pages to be printed, then trimming the browser chrome and printing the screenshots via image editor instead of printing the browser pages directly. This works best if either your screen resolution is considerably higher than 1024x768, or you have virtual desktop/panning enabled, so that the browser viewport can be big enough to hold the equivalent of a whole sheet of paper before taking each screenshot. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/10/06 14:47 (GMT+0100) Dave Howorth composed:
Does anybody else have problems printing some sites, especially blogs?
The problem is not unique to Firefox.
Oh well, at least it's not me going mad then. Thanks for your response.
The power of CSS is extensive. Incompetence in using it abounds. Most blog authors give no thought that anyone might care to print. Sites more than nominally styled with CSS need either a print this page link and/or a separate print stylesheet, but usually this is overlooked or (often to preserve site branding) ignored.
I haven't done much investigation, but I'd assumed that most blog authors use or slightly adapt some theme provided by somebody else - most usually the blog software or hosting site. So I'm surprised it hasn't gotten fixed over time. Wikipedia shows how to do it well. I'm very surprised that google shows how not to do it.
I find what works passably is a separate browser or profile with settings conformed to what web authors assume users use, loading pages to print there, taking screenshots of the pages to be printed, then trimming the browser chrome and printing the screenshots via image editor instead of printing the browser pages directly. This works best if either your screen resolution is considerably higher than 1024x768, or you have virtual desktop/panning enabled, so that the browser viewport can be big enough to hold the equivalent of a whole sheet of paper before taking each screenshot.
Aargh! Yes, that's what I do to print google maps. For text-based pages that I care enough about I save them locally then find the offending bits of CSS and chop them out. Sometimes just removing the whole CSS file is good enough. But both techniques are a royal pain and I'd love to discover something better. Do ANY browsers work, for example? (not that it's the browsers' problem in the first case but ...) Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 2010/10/06 16:17 (GMT+0100) Dave Howorth composed:
Sometimes just removing the whole CSS file is good enough.
Don't need to save to disk to do that. Just set the to-be-printed tab's "Style" to none in the View menu. Also you can remove particular styles before printing without saving to disk first using the Web Developer or Firebug extension. You can also add styles with them to hide junk you don't want printed if you can identify unique container IDs or classes holding the junk. It's tedious, but can be worth it if printing particular content is important. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/10/06 16:17 (GMT+0100) Dave Howorth composed:
Sometimes just removing the whole CSS file is good enough.
Don't need to save to disk to do that. Just set the to-be-printed tab's "Style" to none in the View menu.
Sadly, that doesn't work. It only applies to the screen view and is reset by any printing operation.
Also you can remove particular styles before printing without saving to disk first using the Web Developer or Firebug extension. You can also add styles with them to hide junk you don't want printed if you can identify unique container IDs or classes holding the junk. It's tedious, but can be worth it if printing particular content is important.
Yes, I've tried that occasionally too. Are we two the only people who ever print anything :( Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 07 October 2010 12:19:36 Dave Howorth wrote:
Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/10/06 16:17 (GMT+0100) Dave Howorth composed:
Sometimes just removing the whole CSS file is good enough.
Don't need to save to disk to do that. Just set the to-be-printed tab's "Style" to none in the View menu.
Sadly, that doesn't work. It only applies to the screen view and is reset by any printing operation.
[ snip ]
Yes, I've tried that occasionally too. Are we two the only people who ever print anything :(
Cheers, Dave
Hallo, I've been away from this mailing list for a while, but at the same time I've been having exactly this problem! My solution is to copy and paste the URL of the page to be printed from Firefox into OpenOffice -- the Load URL button/location field on OOo's Standard toolbar makes this easy. Then Export as PDF (or print to paper) from within OpenOffice. This works best if the print version of an online article is first selected; OOo doesn't render the fancier features of some pages. But it formats the main text flow very well, with good font support. Hope this helps, Matt -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Matt Ryan wrote:
My solution is to copy and paste the URL of the page to be printed from Firefox into OpenOffice -- the Load URL button/location field on OOo's Standard toolbar makes this easy. Then Export as PDF (or print to paper) from within OpenOffice.
This works best if the print version of an online article is first selected; OOo doesn't render the fancier features of some pages. But it formats the main text flow very well, with good font support.
That's a great idea. Thanks Matt. Since my original post I've also discovered another alternative that often works, which is the Screengrab add-on for Firefox. It can make a PNG or JPEG of whatever's on the Firefox page, which can then be printed. I see there's also one called ScrapBook but I haven't tried that. Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wednesday, 2010-10-06 at 16:17 +0100, Dave Howorth wrote:
Felix Miata wrote:
I find what works passably is a separate browser or profile with settings conformed to what web authors assume users use, loading pages to print there, taking screenshots of the pages to be printed, then trimming the browser chrome and printing the screenshots via image editor instead of printing the browser pages directly. This works best if either your screen resolution is considerably higher than 1024x768, or you have virtual desktop/panning enabled, so that the browser viewport can be big enough to hold the equivalent of a whole sheet of paper before taking each screenshot.
I copy paste to oowriter, then remove "features" by hand. Often I can't select-copy all, but select by sections, because if you select all the frames are also copied and text can not be flowed. Tedious work.
Aargh! Yes, that's what I do to print google maps.
For that, I print to postscript and open in gimp to extract the picture. If you want more precission, you can also extract the original bitmaps of the google maps and join them together in a big image. Doable with some scripting, at least the satellite view, not the road/street map (I haven't tried). - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from 11.2 x86_64 "Emerald" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkzdPMUACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WKxACeJZ/7u4S67hHzzL7x/aB/wbG+ broAoJEVuh9cO1Iy4O3sqOUuezu+iRKb =L7qz -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Friday 12 November 2010 07:10:28 Carlos E. R. wrote:
For that, I print to postscript and open in gimp to extract the picture. If you want more precission, you can also extract the original bitmaps of the google maps and join them together in a big image. Doable with some scripting, at least the satellite view, not the road/street map (I haven't tried).
i would think ksnapshot would be easier than all that sc -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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