How do we "somewhat" control print size- web page

P

Phil

Im not a designer or developer...but for a children's website with
paper doll images, we want to have a printables page - but realize it
is impossible to guarantee printed image size due to variations
(resolution of printer setting, screen, etc.).

We do not want to do it as pdf, which would allow control of image
size, because we want a doll's name to merge onto the printable page
adjacent to doll, and to do this with pdf would require dynamic merge
generation software....plenty available, but we want to avoid
complexity and forcing a child to download first.

So question is, is there some way to "somewhat" control the printed
image size (meaning the html page size with the doll image on it)
across various viewers browser types (I've seen mention of CSS
elsewhere- useful)

Need not be exact...we want it to print somewhere between "1.5 inches x
4" to "2.5 x 7" ish...

Aside from extensive instructions on page as to how to set printer,
res. etc, any suggestions? Thanks.
 
A

Andy Dingley

Im not a designer or developer...but for a children's website with
paper doll images, we want to have a printables page - but realize it
is impossible to guarantee printed image size due to variations
(resolution of printer setting, screen, etc.).

You can do this pretty robustly with CSS.

Learn about @media print { ... } in your CSS and use sizes in
absolute units, like mm. Use position: absolute; too, and to set the
position of the child's name element.

You can set the size of a bounding box and an image to a physical
dimension that will print quite accurately. Position on the paper will
vary a bit, depending on user settings, but so long as your bounding
element box is "about a page" in size, it will behave for you. Make it
small enough to allow reasonable margins on both US Letter and Euro A4
paper. Make it large enough that "100%" and "Scale to fit" both give
reasonable results.
We do not want to do it as pdf, which would allow control of image
size, because we want a doll's name to merge onto the printable page
adjacent to doll, and to do this with pdf would require dynamic merge
generation software..

It;s really not that hard to generate PDFs, if you went that route..
 
P

Phil

Andy, thanks for the info. Is CSS a "language" that most hosts support?
I just looked at the marketing page of our current host an dit lists
what they support: Cgi, perl, jsp, python....etc, but no mention of
CSS....
 
T

Toby Inkster

Andy said:
US Letter and Euro A4

International A4. A4 is used as the standard letter-sized paper virtually
*everywhere* outside the US -- certainly not just Europe.
 
T

Toby Inkster

Phil said:
Andy, thanks for the info. Is CSS a "language" that most hosts support?

Your host doesn't need to "support" CSS.

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

I'm surprised that there are still people out there who don't know what
CSS is, given that it's been the standard method of suggesting most
aspects of website style and design for ten years.
 
P

Phil

I should have googled a little further before asking last question....I
see its "client side". Thanks again.
 
A

Alan J. Flavell

Your host doesn't need to "support" CSS.

Well, not exactly "support", but it needs to send it out with a
Content-type of text/css : not as text/plain, and certainly not as
application/x-pointplus, of which there *still* seem to be some
examples in the wild.

One web service provider that was getting it wrong responded to their
customer's complaint by saying that they did not support CSS, and had
no plans to do so. Talk about clue-impaired? Oh yes, here it is,
April 2003, Message-id was [email protected]

As we see (at least, those who have the patience to trawl through the
longwinded arguments on that thread about RFC2616 compliance), the
original poster *was* able to overcome their provider's blindspot by
use of their own .htaccess directive.
 
B

Beauregard T. Shagnasty

Alan said:
and certainly not as application/x-pointplus, of which there *still*
seem to be some examples in the wild.

I have an account with one of the larger US ISPs, AT&T Worldnet. I've
also been telling them for *years* that CSS is not
application/x-pointplus.

Guess what?

Warning: The stylesheet https://webauth.att.net/css/sso_styles.css was
loaded as CSS even though its MIME type, "application/x-pointplus", is
not "text/css".

Their web authoring team fits in with that clue pheromones thingy you
posted the other day. <g>
 
A

Andy Dingley

I should have googled a little further before asking last question....I
see its "client side". Thanks again.

If you're that new to CSS, then I suggest the Lie & Bos book "Cascading
Style Sheets" as the most approachable introduction.
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321193121/codesmiths-20>

CSS really isn't that difficult, but it's poorly explained by nearly all
web books and so many people run into more trouble with it than it
deserves.
 

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