Web-based printing solutions

Question

Hello, I'm building a new web-based product. The problem is that many clients have specific printers to print specific documents. Just think reports,barcodes,invoices etc. All on a special printer with the right paper etc...

Usually when printing from the web you cannot make the software choose a printer or change the settings. However it's just that that I want to do.

I want to print without a dialog. And enter the printer + settings with my software

The only solution I know of now is the commercial version of acrobat that has some javascript printing support..

Does anyone know of any other alternatives ?

Thanks in advance !

• small-medium business
• No heavy installion but common stuff is ok ie. flash/silverlight/acrobat/whatever is possible
• I generate what is necessary for printing (PDF/Tiff etc)

Answer 1

Who are your customers -- enterprises or SOHO? Are you generating PDFs? Or, raw tiffs? If you are generating PDFs there is something called a JDF file where you can specify the print settings to your heart's content. The flip side is the device needs to be capable of understanding JDFs. You can then attach the JDF with the PDF as a mime package. If you are generating tiffs, I think there isn't much need of printer settings except for the correct device profile(s) to be installed.

Answer 2

Because of security reasons, you cannot control that from within the browser.

If I where in your shoes, I'd create a small program for my clients to install, registering a specific file extension to this program and creating files in this format on the website, and have the program do the printing for me.

Answer 3

Your easy choices are either PDF or Microsoft's Reporting/Report Viewer