Earlier this afternoon, I was kicked back nibbling the last of the homemade soup from this weekend’s batch and mindlessly [mindfully?] surfing around some blog links to see where they might lead.
It has struck me that, in the last few days, I have been falling into more than my usual share of articles dealing with print in one form or fashion.
This article from The Man in Blue blog:
CSS, printing and user expectation
got me thinking in this direction again. I have read similar comments about the average user looking for and expecting a “Printer Friendly” link or icon, or both. Some might actually want to print out the little messes with graphics and sidebars and such that we display on the screen.
Maybe we are trying to snatch too much control back from our users. Usability is about choices for the person who accesses our web pages, not for us.
None of us want to go back to having to maintain two pages, one for print and one for onscreen display. Having to create .pdf files manually adds extra maintenance for the web designer, as well.
Printable .pdf's also add another twist for Susie Surfer who has never heard of the Adobe Reader and suddenly has that “deer in the headlights” look when it is suggested that she download a program from the web. Didn't that fellow who just charged her an arm and a leg to clean wicked viruses off her system warn her never, ever to do that? Surely Adobe is just sitting there waiting for her to do that so they can add something to her system that will cause her to crash and burn, again! [Someone please tell Susie that Adobe is only interested in draining her wallet, not infecting her machine. ;^]
Several alternatives are discussed in the article and following comments including one which is slightly off-topic, but interesting, on including logos in your print style.
Shortly after reading this article and having this thought replanted in my brain, I ran across this printing solution using a small snippet of PHP at maratz.com:
Ten Minutes to a Printer Friendly Page
This one spawned some debate on the accuracy of the PHP and bandwidth use, but it sounds like it might be worth testing and forming our own opinions of the results.
Speaking of more user friendly pages, I suppose I need to get myself out of the habit of “breaking the back button,” on external links even if I do it with a little script that does not break valid coding. Hey, if users would move out of that clunky, horrid, outdated browser [you know the one I mean] , they would have tabbed browsing and external links would be unnecessary to keep from losing the original website. *sigh*
If you are interested in finding a few of the other articles vaguely related to print, among other things, that I have wandered into lately, check that del.icio.us link down in the resource links in the sidebar on this page.
Farron
[who’s off to feed a hungry _^..^_ ]