Re: Printing and background colors/images

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 11:26 PM, Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Feb 22, 2011, at 12:52 PM, Simon Fraser wrote:
>
> > On Feb 22, 2011, at 12:44 PM, Brad Kemper wrote:
> >
> >> On Feb 22, 2011, at 11:47 AM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> 2011/2/22 Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com>:
> >>>> How about if the author could specify a message that would appear if
> the user was about to print something with backgrounds suppressed? It would
> only appear if the author provided the text content. The UA would provide a
> small preamble ("you are about to print with backgrounds suppressed"), and
> choices for continue or not and for whether it should be a permanent setting
> change or not. The author would write something like this:
> >>>>
> >>>> @warning-no-background: "If you continue, your printout will not show
> text highlighting."
> >>>
> >>> I can guarantee that the two most common responses to this will be:
> >>>
> >>> 1. Hit "Okay" without reading the message, then complain that
> >>> highlighting isn't printing.
> >>
> >> The default would be "allow backgrounds to print this time", since the
> author thought it was important. So, no complaining. If the author's message
> was "you really want to print 5 pages of solid black ink, right?", which I
> think is an unlikely author choice, then the user can hardly complain about
> having their ink wasted, since they OKed it.
> >>
> >>
> >>> 2. Complaining about the broken website, because there's a dialog on
> >>> there now that they don't know how to deal with.
> >>
> >> If the implementor knows what they're doing, it would be very simple for
> the user to deal with occasionally. If it is much more than occasional, and
> the UA doesn't have a "remember this choice for the future" option, then
> maybe the implementors should rethink their
> broken-by-default-with-hidden-fixes situation that exists now.
> >
> > I really don't think it's appropriate to add functionality to CSS that
> causes browsers to throw up prompt dialogs. I very much doubt that we'd ever
> implement something like this in WebKit.
>
> In Webkit, it wouldn't need to. At least not for Safari on Mac, where 1)
> There is already a print dialog that appears every time a person prints
> (unlike IE and it's print icon), and 2) The "Print Backgrounds" checkbox is
> clearly visible on that dialog (unlike IE, where it is even more thoroughly
> hidden). So for Safari, if I had a non-none value for
> '@warning-no-background', then that checkbox would perhaps even be
> de-checked, and if the user re-checks it then the warning message appears
> underneath the checkbox. In red, maybe. The spec would not mandate the exact
> UI of how the warning was presented.
>
>
This is soemwhat dubious. You have to click the triangle to get the options
to show up, losing a large part of users there. Then, you have to know to
choose "Safari" in the dropdown in the middle. Then, you /still/ have to as
a user understand what the heck it means to print backgrounds, and what
exactly would be the difference. It's still quite buried and it's still IMO
an unnecessary cognitive burden to place on the user.

P.S. what you said is only true for Safari on Mac. As far as I can tell they
don't expose the option on windows.