[drupal-devel] printer friendly versions for nodes

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

***@asitis.org writes:

[moving to drupal-users]

In contributions/sandbox/mathias/modules/print you'll find a module
i wrote last night allowing you to generate printer friendly
versions of any node by navigating to example.com/print/[node id |
node title].
The code is an amalgamation of the printer friendly feature of the
book module and the filtering of title module.
If enough people find it useful, i'll move it into the modules
directory. I needed this functionality for printable press releases.

How do the usability experts rate this approach? I had such a module
for Drupal 3.0 but I was told that it would be better to include a
printer friendly css stylesheet. What do users expect?

Cheers,
Gerhard

[Bèr Kessels]

Post by Gerhard Killesreiter
How do the usability experts rate this approach? I had such a module
for Drupal 3.0 but I was told that it would be better to include a
printer friendly css stylesheet. What do users expect?

I'm not an expert in this, but I do have some ideas about this.

In an ideal world Microsoft would make good software, that understands
the latest standards. Included CSS stadards.
But wer'e not in an ideal world, and therefor using CSS-chages for a
printable layout is really a Hell of a Job.

A big problem arises when you wnat to show users the way their print
will look. I fear far too less users will preview their print by using
print-preview. Most of them will just look at what they see and then
decide to print that. If they see lots of banners/headers etc., they
might not press the printbutton on top of their screen.

A small module is by-far the easiest option. It might -from technical
point of view- not be the best solution, it is the simplest, one that at
least always works. And untill Mocrosoft decides to integrate better css
support it might be the only one.

Ber