What is the CSS code to do a page break when printing? Or better yet, is there some print CSS framework like JQuery is to web page DOM manipulation? I need to print web pages with control like Adobe PDF, but without using a third party plug-in. Prints need to be precise, like controlling what pixels hit the top of each page, (if we want to put our logo on each page header for example.
Any ideas?
You can try to force a page break using the page-break-before or page-break-after properties.
Pixel-perfect print control will be very, very hard to achieve. For example, each browser adds a footer and header section that you cannot influence and only the user can turn off. Browsers disregard background images, and tend to set margins as they see fit.
For a rundown on how to style HTML for print, this Smashing Magazine article may provide some pointers: Printing the Web: Solutions and Techniques
The w3schools.com has a handy CSS Reference. Since most of us cannot remember many uncommon css properties, hope this is useful for you.
Browser support for printing is very weak, at best. For example, getting something like a page header image to work is going to be pretty rough; I don't know of any browsers that even support the "@page" CSS declaration, let alone the running content features of CSS3.
The FlyingSaucer PDF toolkit for Java, on the other hand, does a remarkable job of transforming XHTML into PDFs (especially given that it's free). We use it with Freemarker to template the "page", but it handles images, running header/footer text, even intra-document links.
You cannot get pixel-level print precision from a browser. Your only option is PDF or similar 3rd party document format. However, if you just want to ensure a logo is on the top of a page vs the bottom of the next, you can use the page-break-before, page-break-after properties
I'm not sure what server language you're using but I've had great success with wkhtmltopdf and wicked_pdf for Ruby on Rails.