Re: Printing Backgrounds

On Oct 6, 2007, at 2:05 PM, Allan Sandfeld Jensen wrote:

>
> On Saturday 06 October 2007 22:10, you wrote:
>> On Oct 6, 2007, at 3:07 AM, Allan Sandfeld Jensen wrote:
>>> With the difference being on the user side, I really don't think it
>>> should be
>>> controlable by the author.
>>
>> No one is arguing that the user should not be in control. It is more
>> about the default, since most people never look at advanced printing
>> options and risk changing something there. The design should be in
>> the hands of the designer, until such point that the user decides to
>> override it.
>
> What I am saying is that whether or not backgrounds should be  
> printed or not
> depends more on the user's hardware than on the design of the  
> webpage. This
> makes the user's defaults more important than the authors.

Sure, I agree with that, but the browser software publishers do not  
know the capabilities of the print device, or if they do, then I  
don't think they currently  take that into account. If the user  
knows, then it is perfectly reasonable for them to change the setting  
to reflect their desire, and the software should remember that choice  
the next time it is launched.

> You might solve one problem with this; websites designed for easy  
> printing but
> uses backgrounds, but you introduce a new; changing defaults which  
> will
> surprise any user who know what he is doing, and expects his  
> browser to
> respect his defaults.
>
> `Allan

Agreed, that is a practical consideration. I am not a software  
designer, but I imagine there could be ways to overcome that (a  
screen during installation that asks the user to make a choice  
between suppressing all backgrounds or not, or perhaps making the  
options more prominent on the "Print" dialog box, so that people can  
quickly see where to change the setting back if they wish), or phase  
in the solution by starting with fantasai's proposal for changing  
this first on style sheets that are characterized as being print  
media (or all media).

I really think any backlash would be against the designers more than  
against the software publishers, and the designers could quickly  
learn to start using print media style sheets. As well, I think that  
if the option to change back to the old way was easy to find (and  
assuming that the software remembered their decision the next time  
the software was launched), then users would not have that big of a  
problem with it.

Received on Saturday, 6 October 2007 22:02:27 UTC