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Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

modrenman.com

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Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#11

Post by cyberpanther »

Even if we all agreed to make sites printable you would never be happy with it. Right now certain CSS rules such as "float" can not be applied to print. This means you can not do any advanced layouts without totally redoing your HTML.

It is far more important to have a site mobile compatible than print compatible which again will probably cause some HTML refactoring. So more websites are going to worry about being mobile compatible and not waste their time on print.

The percentage of people who print a site is so negotiable, that like mcmillion said you would be better served supporting IE6. This combined with the fact that print versions can not match the screen version means you'll probably never see a site embrace your rallying cry.

Your best bet is to stop killing trees and get a Kindle Paper White or other e-reader with a web browser.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#13

Post by snide »

So recently I re-built the theme for Read the Docs which some of you more pythonic devs might be using. Despite having designed sites for nearly two-decades it was the first time I'd ever gotten a request to make sure there was some print rules in there. Makes sense with docs.

The funny bit of course is I didn't even know there was a specific print rule I could use. Took me about 10 minutes to fix.

Actually, looking at the design now I just noticed a bug. Off to my text editor!

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#14

Post by zorbo »

I personally don't care that much about most articles being printable, but if you're making any kind of material that is supposed to be studied, please, please make sure it's properly printable. Doing research / studying a topic is something that is still infinitely easier to do on paper IMHO.

Having said that, does anybody know a decent web-based app for researching stuff? What I definitively need is:

* Ability to have a collection of related articles in one place

* Simple list of bookmarks that link to a specific part of the text.

* Highlighting in different colors

* Adding comments to a page that are _easy_ to view. Preferably in a sidebar next to the page or something.

* Adding links to external sources interactively to the document

* The ability to write a summary of the article

I've searched before a few times, but I've never been able to find something that had all the above and, more importantly, properly integrated those features.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#15

Post by cmiles74 »

The idea of printing a web page (particularly an article) does seem, in many ways, pointless. As others mentioned, it's a fundamentally different medium that strips out all of the things that make a web page compelling (linking, dynamicism, etc.)

On the other hand, there's clear value in stripping out the ephemera and detritus around a work in order to concentrate more centrally on the work itself. While the idea of "printable" becomes less and less tenable, the core idea of focusing on the work itself is still important. In some ways it seems a loss that these ideas have become conflated.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#16

Post by leoc »

onli wrote: post #3

The premise is questionable. A webpage lives in its own medium, or it is its own medium. It is normally meant to be read with an electronic device, to be interactive and linked, though those devices can be quite different of course. But by printing a webarticle, you are transforming it into another medium, onto paper. Therefore it is actually a very strong assumption - and one I don't follow - to "expect them to supp…

> The premise is questionable. A webpage lives in its own medium, or it is its own medium.

You have to bear in mind that this view is diametrically opposed to the principle of separating presentation and content on which CSS, the HTML content-markup elements and so on were based.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#17

Post by alexmuller »

I couldn't disagree more with the author about appended URLs being a problem. A print stylesheet is exactly when you want URLs to be displayed in the text of the page, because there's no other way to find out where that underlined text is supposed to be pointing.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#18

Post by onli »

leoc wrote: post #16
onli wrote: post #3

The premise is questionable. A webpage lives in its own medium, or it is its own medium. It is normally meant to be read with an electronic device, to be interactive and linked, though those devices can be quite different of course. But by printing a webarticle, you are transforming it into another medium, onto paper. Therefore it is actually a very strong assumption - and one I don't follow - to "expect them to supp…

> The premise is questionable. A webpage lives in its own medium, or it is its own medium. You have to bear in mind that this view is diametrically opposed to the principle of separating presentation and content on which CSS, the HTML content-markup elements and so on were based.

I think I know what you are targeting at, but I really don't think so.

You can have a separation of presentation and content while still targeting a specific medium, the separation doesn't automatically mean that the content is fitting for every medium.

And the elements used here show that pretty clearly. When just regarding HTML and ignoring CSS, you can see its elements that are made for other mediums than paper. It is Hyper Text after all, not Text.

And when just regarding CSS, you have all those elements that are of no use on paper, like position: fixed.

Or just think of the issue in responsive design of wanting to have another, shorter text for mobile devices. There, even the content alone is not fitting for the medium, regardless of the presentation.

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#19

Post by rrrx3 »

print.css = "Hi, I need you to continue to support this increasingly smaller edge case, to make this rapidly dwindling user base happy about something that should not, under any circumstances, be happening in 2014."

Supporting the printing of pages is inefficient and wasteful. It's the IE6 argument all over again. There are more meaningful ways of both storing and distributing information digitally.

Even for atacrawl's scenario - we should be building systems that make these types of documents easier to fill out digitally than on paper. I don't know about you guys, but when I have to fill out a paper form, I get frustrated because of the near-universal poor design.

Printing should be dead. Why are we keeping it on life support?

Re: Whither print.css? A Rallying Cry for a Web That’s Fit to Print (2013)

#20

Post by psychometry »

zorbo wrote: post #14

I personally don't care that much about most articles being printable, but if you're making any kind of material that is supposed to be studied, please, please make sure it's properly printable. Doing research / studying a topic is something that is still infinitely easier to do on paper IMHO. Having said that, does anybody know a decent web-based app for researching stuff? What I definitively need is: * Ability to h…

I've been using Scrivener to organize materials for research projects: http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

It has a steep learning curve, but only because it's so powerful and extensible.

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