If you are planning to print from the browser, you will need to control
print borders, headers and footers directly from the browser. For
Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and (I think) Mozilla, go to
File, Page Setup on the main menu and you will see options specifically
for these and other print settings.
I have found HTML opened from the browser to not be very good for
precise printing. Instead, it may pay to generate the labels in
another application and open it from the browser. For example, you
could use Office Web Components (OWC) to generate an Excel spreadsheet
which is formatted precisely for your labels. The spreadsheet can then
be opened in Excel from a link you provide in the browser.
Another approach that I have taken is to generate a comma-delimited
text file from the web application and store it on the server. The
user is then directed to open a MS Word document which is set up for a
mail merge. When the user opens the document, he/she is prompted to
enter a username. From that point, code in the document sets the mail
merge source to the appropriate csv file previously created on the
server. The advantage of this method is that the users (who were all
very experienced in doing MS Word mail merges) can individually change
the formatting to suit their needs. The disadvantage is that the
method is a bit clumsy because it required a few extra steps. Also, MS
Office security must be adjusted on each workstation to allow macros to
run. It does, however, produce perfect mailing label prints.
Bill E.
