Webpage printable area

[fermineutron]

A friend of mine asked me to make a tool which will let her print
graph paper with cells of chosen size. I want to make a php script to
output a table with cells being a given size to yeild graphpater when
webpage is printed. What I need to know is:

what is a printable area width and height of a webpage? I do realize
that the height part is somewhat hard to judge because webpage can go
on and on and on.... What is a pizel resolution of webpage in relation
to printer resolution? If user has his desktop resolution set to say
1024x768 vs user who has resolution set 800x600 if i put a table with
width 90% will this table when printed by both users occupy 90% of the
page width?

How does this analogy apply to cell height?

Thanks ahead

 

[Andy Dingley]

what is a printable area width and height of a webpage?

Use CSS, and use length units of mm (or points for font sizes).
Normally we always advocate using length units of ems for "fluid
design" on screen, but this sort of printing application is where it's
appropriate to use these absolute units.

You can't control the print margins of where a web pages' canvas is
placed on the paper. Nor can you control the paper size selected for
printing. You need to have the user set this manually in their
browser. If they're using IE though, MeadCo's ScriptX ActiveX control
can set this for you automatically.

 

[fermineutron]

Use CSS, and use length units of mm (or points for font sizes).
Normally we always advocate using length units of ems for "fluid
design" on screen, but this sort of printing application is where it's
appropriate to use these absolute units.

You can't control the print margins of where a web pages' canvas is
placed on the paper. Nor can you control the paper size selected for
printing. You need to have the user set this manually in their
browser. If they're using IE though, MeadCo's ScriptX ActiveX control
can set this for you automatically.

Thank you

 

[Ed Mullen]

A friend of mine asked me to make a tool which will let her print
graph paper with cells of chosen size. I want to make a php script to
output a table with cells being a given size to yeild graphpater when
webpage is printed. What I need to know is:

what is a printable area width and height of a webpage? I do realize
that the height part is somewhat hard to judge because webpage can go
on and on and on.... What is a pizel resolution of webpage in relation
to printer resolution? If user has his desktop resolution set to say
1024x768 vs user who has resolution set 800x600 if i put a table with
width 90% will this table when printed by both users occupy 90% of the
page width?

How does this analogy apply to cell height?

Thanks ahead

Not sure why you want to do this using a browser. Why not a table in
Word where you can set the row and column dimensions explicitly in
fractions of an inch for printing?

 

[Bergamot]

Not sure why you want to do this using a browser. Why not a table in
Word

Seems to me a spreadsheet would be better suited to this.

 

[Ed Mullen]

Seems to me a spreadsheet would be better suited to this.

That's what I thought at first. I gave a quick look in Excel 2000 and
it may be possible but exact sizing of row and columns isn't immediately
apparent. Sizing of row height and column width seems to be related to
point size. Newer versions may have finer control of those settings, I
just don't know.

Word 2000, on the other hand, allows very specific sizing of table cells
height and width in fractions of an inch.

Also, while I haven't explored this, I would think that Photoshop or
Paint Shop Pro would probably have the facility to produce a grid image
of specific layout/size.

 

[El Kabong]

Excel is the greatest _if_ the mailing list is being built internally but if
the list is developed from an on line opt-in form, sometimes you need to be
able to pull that data into something printable.

CSS, combined with ColdFusion templates does a great job at this sort of
thing. If the lists weren't confidential, I would direct you to one of the
two sites I have where this is done. Maybe I can post some sample code
later.

El