[sword-devel] OSIS WEB TOOL - Print?

[Don A. Elbourne Jr.]

Tom,

I see your point. My experience has been that many "printer friendly
versions" aren't much better. But you are right, we need to communicate to
the user what they will be getting when they hit "print." Giving them a
reasonable facsimile of the print version on screen is one option. Another
would be to give them this information in some other way.

Eric Myer, author of several books on CSS, recently re-designed Devedge. He
told me that the upper-management insisted that he include a "printer
friendly version" link in the design. You can see his solution by pulling up
any of the articles and scrolling down to the last link on the right
sidebar. For example:

http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/why-web-standards/

Try printing the article, or use file > Print Preview if your browser has
that function.

Another option may be to do like a friend of mine did on his re-design. View
any of the articles at: http://www.thywordistruth.net/

He just gives a blurb, instead of a link, that says to print the page as you
normally would and the formatting will take care of itself.

There are several other options. Maybe we could have a little printer
graphic, like those normally associated with the "Click here for a printer
friendly version" but instead have the text read "This page is printer
friendly." Something like: http://elbourne.org/css/3columns.html Perhaps
only showing up on pages that are in fact suitable for printing.

Whatever we decide on, my vote would be not to have the "Print" as a tab in
the main navigation of the site.


by grace alone,

Don A. Elbourne Jr.
http://elbourne.org










----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Pollard" <mlpollard@earthlink.net>
To: <sword-devel@crosswire.org>
Cc: "Tom Pollard" <mlpollard@earthlink.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2003 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: [sword-devel] OSIS WEB TOOL - Print?


> Hi,
>
> I'm usually just listening on this mail list, but as a future user of
> the web tool,
> I think having a 'print' button to bring up a printer-friendly version
> of the page is a very good idea.  If a site using frames doesn't have
> such a button, I've become reluctant to try printing it at all, because
> the results are so often horrible.  And, although I may not exactly
> understand the significance of using a special 'print' stylesheet, if
> it means that the printed page doesn't look like what's on the screen,
> people won't be as happy with this as with a "give-me-a-printable-page"
> button.
>
> Just my 2p.  I'll fade back into the underbrush again now...
>
> Tom Pollard
>
> On Saturday, September 27, 2003, at 10:14 AM, Don A. Elbourne Jr. wrote:
> > You can do that with a print style sheet. I have one with the mock-up
> > I was
> > working on:
> >
> > http://elbourne.org/css/3columns02.html
> >
> > Print that page straight from your browser and see how it looks.
>
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