Screen layout good, print layout bad

[Erin Paseka]

I'm a big fan of the new "gridX" layout, except it kinda clobbers us in printing. What you see is not what you get. Every gridX div prints on a new line, so printouts are extra long and not WYSIWYG.

For a long time I used table-based layouts because the old "col" layouts did this too. Now I've mostly switched over to gridX and I'm getting complaints. I know printing web pages isn't always a good practice--frequent changes and tree killing and all--but sometimes somebody really does want a hard copy, and they're not happy when it looks nothing like what's on the screen. The biggest demand is probably on our grad program summary pages, like this one: http://www.unl.edu/gradstudies/prospect ... stry.shtml .

Can this be fixed/improved at the WDN level with a shared print stylesheet?

[kabel2]

Good point Erin. There have been a few occasions that people have commented about the print style sheets and the lack of columns. I can't specifically say when/what the last conversation was, but I believe columns "originally" weren't built into the print CSS because most browsers could not properly handle the "floating" blocks and things would usually end up getting cut off or worse.

Perhaps it is time that someone reinvests some time in exploring how different browsers handle printing columns and how best to handle the obvious problem of converting from pixel (screen) widths to inch (paper) widths. Do you have a suggestion as to which browser(s) should be focused on first?

[Erin Paseka]

I'd suggest Firefox, but really we'll take what we can get. It would be an improvement just to be able to tell people, "Sorry that doesn't print nicely in ___; if you try ___ instead I think you'll be happier with the results."

[kabel2]

Hi Erin,

Just wanted to let you know that the new templates included some work on the print stylesheet. I believe the columns should now print in some regard. It is probably by no means perfect, but certainly better than the previous iteration.