On 8/4/07, fantasai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello! > I'm a Mozilla developer, and I have a slightly off-topic question for the > members of css-discuss. > > As I'm sure many of you have noticed, browsers don't print backgrounds by > default. As David Dorward notes [1], this is in large part to avoid wasting > ink printing pages that weren't designed to be printed. > > We'd like to make it possible for designers who /do/ take the time to > consider printing to use backgrounds and have them printed by default. > > My suggestion was to automatically allow background printing for any > pages that import an explicit 'print' style sheet, the logic being that > if you've taken the trouble to provide a dedicated style sheet for > print, then we should trust that you are not going to abuse the printer > and allow you use of its ink for your backgrounds. (This is similar to > how Opera employs lots of heuristics to tweak layouts for display on > cell phones, but gives the designer full control if he or she has > specified a style sheet explicitly for 'handheld'.) > > My superreviewer David Baron is concerned that this kind of switch would > be confusing to web authors. E.g. importing an empty print style sheet > would suddenly cause all backgrounds to print. > > So we want to know what you think: would a switch like this be confusing? > Is there a better way to handle this kind of switch? What are your thoughts > on this problem? > > For those who want more details, the bug report is here: > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=381466 > > ~fantasai >
I don't see anything confusing in it*. I suppose it might catch a few developers off guard at first but going forward, I would imagine the existing method is far more confusing to anyone unfamiliar with this problem. What's more confusing, "I said show a background for printed versions of the page and so you printed it" or "I said show a background for printed versions of the page and so you ignored me"? * caveat: After rereading what you wrote I realized that I misinterpreted your plan. My above comment would apply if and only if the background was specified in the print style sheet. That would seem to indicate to me that a developer knows what they want (as in your opera example). Printing a background specified elsewhere just because there is a print style sheet could easily catch a lot more developers off guard and be more confusing (though probably still less surprising/confusing than failing silently). Would it be reasonable to be that specific about when to print or not to print a background? Rob ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d IE7 information -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=IE7 List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
