A print stylesheet formats a web page so when printed, it automatically prints in a user-friendly format. Print stylesheets have been around for a number of years and have been written about a lot. Yet so few websites implement them, meaning we're left with web pages that frustratingly don't properly print on to paper.
It's remarkable that so few websites use print stylesheets as:
- Print stylesheets enormously improve usability, especially for pages with a lot of content (such as this one!)
- They're phenomenally quick and easy to set up
How to set up your print stylesheet
A print stylesheet works in much the same way as a regular stylesheet, except it only gets called up when the page is printed. To make it work, the following needs to be inserted into the top of every web page:<link rel="stylesheet" href="print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />
Remove unwanted items
Usually it's just your organisation logo and page content that you'll want to appear on the printed version of the web page. You'll normally want to remove the header, left column and right column. You may also want to remove the footer (or some of it) from the printed version, unless it contains your contact details.There may be certain isolated items you'd prefer weren't printed so you can simply assign these
class="noprint" in the HTML. To get rid of these items, along with the header and navigation (assuming these are assigned div id="header" and div id="nav") use the display: none command:#header, #nav, .noprint {display: none;}You may also want to remove certain images and adverts, especially animated images as these won't make sense when printed.
Format the page
There's nothing worse than printing off a web page to find the last few words of each line cut off. It's also annoying (and a waste of paper) when the left and right columns are left in, leaving a very narrow space for the content so the web page prints on to 15 pieces of paper.Generally speaking, the three CSS commands you'll need are:
width: 100%; margin: 0; float: none;These commands should be applied to any containing elements (
div for a CSS layout and table for table layouts) to ensure the content spans the full width of the paper. So, the full CSS command would perhaps be something like:#container, #container2, #content {width: 100%; margin: 0; float: none;}Change the font?
Some print stylesheets do change the font size (often to 12pt) but this isn't generally a very good idea. If users increase text size on the screen then the text will print in this larger font size... unless you specify a fixed font size in the print stylesheet.Other print stylesheets change the font family to a serif font (such as Times New Roman) as this is slightly easier to read from print. Whether you choose to do this or not is up to you as users may be a bit surprised to see a different font printed out.
Do also bear in mind that background images and colours don't print out by default. As such, you may wish to change the colour of text in a light colour so it has a reasonable colour contrast without its background.
Links
Print-outs are often in black and white so do make sure that links have a decent colour contrast. If not, assign links a slightly darker colour in the print out. For example:a:link, a:visited {color: #781351}Making the print stylesheet
When making the print stylesheet place the print CSS commands into the bottom of your main CSS file. As you keep adding more commands check how your web pages look on the computer screen (don't do this on a live website!). Keep adding commands until you're happy with the appearance, then cut these commands out of the main CSS file and paste into the print stylesheet.To summarise, your print stylesheet may look similar to this:
/* Remove unwanted elements */
#header, #nav, .noprint
{
display: none;
}
/* Ensure the content spans the full width */
#container, #container2, #content
{
width: 100%; margin: 0; float: none;
}
/* Change text colour to black (useful for light text on a dark background) */
.lighttext
{
color: #000
}
/* Improve colour contrast of links */
a:link, a:visited
{
color: #781351
}
You've now got a print stylesheet! For something this quick and easy to set up that improves usability as much as it does, you'd be mad not to use one!
0 comments:
Post a Comment