How to display a print preview of an HTML document

+3 A:

I don't think this is possible. You cannot know all the users' print-settings in the browser (javascript) and definitely not on the server (php, asp, java).

update

Think about it this way (please keep in mind that a decent 100% solid print preview is NOT possible):

User navigates to page and asks for a print preview
Website provides print preview (preferably in a html-format, otherwise png or pdf)
User likes and wants to print:
1. From the browser
2. From some image viewing/editing program (png)
3. From Acrobat (pdf)
Every print solution has it's own Print... dialog. You can change print settings here.

It's the last point where everything you want fails... You don't have control over the output anymore at that point (from your website)...

Ropstah 2009-06-04 22:19:34

thanks, I forgot to mention that the page size is letter no matter what the user has configured

Flupkear 2009-06-04 22:21:50

The page size is only one issue. The make/model of the printer determines the printable area of the image and affects the soft page breaks and margins. There really is no way to reliably predict what it will look like without knowing the details of the printer and print driver.

JohnFx 2009-06-04 22:33:37

Indeed, I said users' print-settings, I meant the client print configuration (all the stuff JohnFx states).

Ropstah 2009-06-04 23:00:35

A:

HTML wasn't really meant for page layout, it was meant to be read on screen. Why is the browsers page preview not good enough?

Anyways, what you could do is try and convert the html to latex or something similar, and render that to a pdf or png on the server side and display that. But that would preclude using very complicated html layouts otherwise it will get pretty nasty.

whatsisname 2009-06-04 22:29:15

thanks, this is the same solution I came with

Flupkear 2009-06-04 22:30:28

This will not give the users a fair print preview, unless they get the converted pdf or png to print. Even then it depends on the printer how it will look (you display a marginless printer but the printer isn't able to print marginless... will it compress to the printable dimensions, or will it print several parts over several pages..?

Ropstah 2009-06-04 23:02:51

the idea is show the user how many pages the HTML will contain when printed. when they actually want to print it, the original HTML will be use so the margin and all that will be set by the printer

Flupkear 2009-06-04 23:34:50

+2 A:

As others have point out, you can't do this. My recommendation is that you make a "printer-friendly" version that just contains a plain white background and plain black text. But that's about as close as you can get to the actual "print preview".

musicfreak 2009-06-04 22:31:18

A:

I think there's a simple workaround.

You can ask user the page size and top, bottom, left, right margins. Then render the page in PDF using these settings. PDF will guarantee that the page will be printed as generated.

I think this approach should work well.

Abhijeet Pathak 2010-05-14 21:57:18

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

How to display a print preview of an HTML document

related questions