[Sigia-l] RE: Printer-friendly button

[manuel razzari]

Hello Jason. 

I think it's actually the opposite. 

You can, of course, design your website so it prints somewhat nicely.

But, in doing this, you are limiting your screen design, your power to
communicate or express, to what paper can do. I doubt constraining web design
to this is in any way useful. 

Besides, there are very nice things you can do for the print version of a web
page.

- Like hiding navigation (if irrelevant). 
- Or writing the URL of a link after the link text (as the paper user can't
click on the link!). 
- Or placing a media-dependant copyright notice. 
- Or using sans-serif for screen and serif for print. 

Back on how to make it more intuitable or expectable, Brian Ghidinelli's
sugestion of a once-only alert is interesting. 
Perhaps better would be a broser-integrated thumbnail preview on the print
dialog itself, as many users don't even know there's print preview... but this
is too far away ;)


best,
- Manuel Razzari
ps. Web apps are a rather different issue, I think.


> I'm not responding to any one post intentionally.  I can (somewhat)
>  see the benefit of giving the user a shortcut to a print dialogue 
> box, but all this talk of multiple versions of pages kind of floors 
> me!  Why would we want two versions of every page (even if it's 
> 'automated' w/ CSS)?
> -
> Is there a reason that our site/apps/programs can't be designed to 
> print correctly in the first place--w/o making the user switch to a 
> print version?  If one of the user goals is to print, then it would 
> make sense to design for this upfront...
> 
> It seems that a lot of work is being put into re-thinking inherent 
> functionality (printing) of a users' browser/app--and we're just 
> trying to find a work around of a seriously limited design!