Re: Printing and background colors/images

On Feb 23, 2011, at 9:04 AM, Ian Fette (イアンフェッティ) wrote:

> 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.
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> This is soemwhat dubious. You have to click the triangle to get the options to show up, losing a large part of users there.

Once open, it stays open forever, or until you close it, so I am used to always seeing it open. I imagine you are right though, that the number of people who have never clicked it is significant.

> Then, you have to know to choose "Safari" in the dropdown in the middle.

I don't think so. I think it is always the default.

> 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.

Well if the default is to uncheck it when the author included a message to indicate it is important, then those who can't understand can just accept the author's choice. In which case, there is no more cognitive burden than the other choices discussed, but there is an easy way to change it for anyone who finds it important to do so. I suspect that those who don't understand the checkbox would also be the ones that don't care (until something doesn't print that should), and would also be the ones to leave the disclosure triangle closed.

> 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.

That's OK, since Safari only has minuscule market share on Windows. ;)
I suppose the OS has a lot to do with the print dialog.