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

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

#31

Post by zokier »

While I do think that doing throw-away prints of webpages is bit questionable, there is still some value in making webpage print out nicely. I think "printing" PDFs is one of the easiest robust ways of archiving web pages. It creates nice static self-contained local copy of the content, which is readable basically on any platform.

Another example would be e-readers (eg Kindle) which in ways are closer to print than web as a medium. They are not currently really equipped to handle web-pages well; Send to Kindle extension seems to do some sort of readability-like heuristic when formatting web-pages to be sent for Kindle. It would be kinda nice if print css would be good enough to work as-is on Kindle (etc).

Of course there is the question of the overall quality of current web-design. Many pages are just ridiculously busy to begin with, something that somehow becomes accentuated when printed out. Maybe designers should spend a moment after building a print layout reflecting if all that stuff that needed chopping away for print was actually necessary to have in the first place.

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

#32

Post by lifthrasiir »

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…

I agree to this a lot. The printing medium is an entirely different target to optimize; say, the figures need to be consolidated to individual pages or made small enough to fit the aside, all the convenient hyperlinked references need to be at least reconsidered as they will constantly stop the reading when rendered, even the document structures need to be reconsidered (we have a table of contents for a reason). Heck, even that website itself does not optimize for the figures either---lots of irrelevant images take up their own pages, one per page. It is hard, and takes real work to get that good enough.

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

#33

Post by zokier »

DanBC wrote: post #22
onli wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

> 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. The corruption of the www is something that still makes me sad and angry even though I know I lost the argument years ago. You should not know, nor care, how the reader is usin the info…

> The corruption of the www is something that still makes me sad and angry even though I know I lost the argument years ago.

You and me both. It is kinda funny (for the lack of better word) how Wikipedia is kinda what I imagine hypertext/web was initially envisioned to be (except for its centralized nature). But it lives another layer above the web, being a web-app for handling hypertext with it's own UI (nested inside browser UI which in turn is nested inside system UI), its own markup format (because HTML evolved away from being pure hypertext format), and its own update mechanism (instead of HTTP methods, because REST is hard, lets go shopping)

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

#35

Post by alok-g »

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…

>> And that even before talking about protecting the nature from wasteful habits like this.

Unfortunately, reading on paper is an order-of-magnitude better than reading on the screen. I have consistently noted that:

1. I absorb the material better when reading in printed form, not sure why. 2. My eyes strain less. 3. I find three times more typos (when proof-reading my own stuff), not sure why. 4. Annotating and highlighting is doable (possible on screen, but does not even compare to the same on paper). 5. Moving back and forth within the material is a lot better.

Not that I like hurting nature, but technology doesn't yet offer a suitable replacement here. E-Ink helps but fails on #4 till better products (like Sony's recently announced E-reader) show up and are less costly (Sony's priced at $1000+). Also, moving content to the new device needs to be at least as convenient as printing (and while staying within the firewall).

>> It is normally meant to be read with an electronic device

This is exactly what OP is questioning, and I fully agree. Why is this normal?!

>> to be interactive and linked, though those devices can be quite different of course.

I am web newbie. But I wonder about mankind spending so much effort on making web pages "responsive" based on the screen sizes of the various devices, and yet, not applying the same techniques to printing.

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

#36

Post by jimktrains2 »

dstalli wrote: post #24

I do not understand the need to print out any webpage. The occasional form for a bank still requires faxing but that is usually a pdf anyways. Also, what about the environmental cost? If we make it easier to print, will more people print? Whether we make it easier to print or not I suspect that as children are exposed to technology at a very young age there will be less of a need/want to print. When you have a tablet…

Forms that still require papers copies to be kept on file?

HR dept that require paper resumes?

Perhaps I just want to format my resume as a PDF using the browser print to file (my main use case)?

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

#37

Post by alok-g »

Raphmedia wrote: post #2

I've heard of people printing whole articles and reading them in paper format before. Personally, I would rather have a print.css that hides everything but a message that says "save the trees, don't print an article only to discard it after". We do have some clients that ask for their website to be printable, but it's mostly clients that are in the legal or medical business. It doesn't come in regular contracts, the…

See my comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609711

I would find this message rather rude. I am interested in saving trees, but do not think technology offers me a solution yet. I print out of necessity.

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

#38

Post by Clanan »

ef4 wrote: post #30

Unfortunately, printed media support in CSS still sucks. I have a web app that needs to generate printable official documents, and it's really not possible to do a good job with CSS. I resort to generating PDF in Javascript, which is laborious and duplicates a lot of effort. My biggest gripe is the inability to control the header and footer and the inability to sanely specify where page breaks are allowed.

> the inability to sanely specify where page breaks are allowed.

I can usually explain away the issues of printing from a web page, except for this point. My customers always have difficulty accepting that I can't set page breaks. Cruel first-world problems!

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

#39

Post by alok-g »

TimFogarty wrote: post #25
alexmuller wrote: post #17

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.

URLs should be displayed for sure, but inline is far too disruptive to smooth reading. I think it would be better done "reference style" if possible. Something similar to how it is done in markdown would be nice: I get 10 times more traffic from [Google][1] than from [Yahoo][2] or [MSN][3]. [1]: http://google.com/ "Google" [2]: http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search" [3]: http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search"

It can also be simplified to "I get 10 times more traffic from Google[1] than from Yahoo[2] or MSN[3]." Note that I removed the square brackets from the URL text.

While this is information-lossy, the context of the link is nearly always clear from the text.

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

#40

Post by mountaineer »

ef4 wrote: post #30

Unfortunately, printed media support in CSS still sucks. I have a web app that needs to generate printable official documents, and it's really not possible to do a good job with CSS. I resort to generating PDF in Javascript, which is laborious and duplicates a lot of effort. My biggest gripe is the inability to control the header and footer and the inability to sanely specify where page breaks are allowed.

I've used to prevent unsightly page breaks. (specifically for rendering web pages that are then captured and served as PDFs)
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