Printed matter(s) !
I’ve spent the last couple of days reading through Web sites, documentation, and programming examples, looking for a decent Web Content Management framework which I can use for my pet project. In so doing, I’ve become more and more annoyed, hence this rant.
Why is it that Web site designers, Web publishers, what-have-you, spend so much time making their site look cool, but pay no attention at all to the way it looks when it’s printed? I refuse to read more than one continuous browser page on screen. Any more than that — especially if it’s something I need to concentrate on, such as the documentation of a complex programming framework — and I print it and read the printed version. Even more so, when it’s a programming documentation or framework example which I need to have next to my keyboard in order to follow the example.
This approach is sometimes (often) almost totally prevented by the Web design, CSS magic, etc., that people use to spiff up their site. Something (say, an article in a Blog) looks pretty neat on the screen. But when you print it, you end up with a very thin strip of almost intelligible print, about a quarter of the width of the page, which runs over twenty pages. Or the programming examples are in neat “overflow” DIVs, which end up cutting off the content when printed. Or the font size of the singlespaced font is set such that the examples run off the page to the right. Then you think you’ve found the link to a printable version (after all, it’s a little printer icon), which in fact is simple linked via JavaScript to “print this page”, which ends up printing the exact crap you have on screen, without any formatting, etc.
Can’t these people put together a CSS for printing, which turns off all the bells and whistles (e.g. overflow on DIVs), puts the page to a single-column continuous format which can be read without a magnifying glass?
Do you really expect me to use your Web CMS framework, if you can’t even use it to put together a site that prints and is still readable?
An astoundingly high proportion of pages which simply refuse to print have the “Blogger.com” icon somewhere on the screen. But it’s not just the hobbyists who are guilty of this. I’ve come across this over and over again in IBM and Sun Web sites and online documentation. Other than that, I’ll name no more names. Additional examples are available on request.
So, please let me print! If only to save me the embarrassment of having to drag my LCD or Laptop with me to the loo. Thank you.
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September 29th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
[…] Oh, and P.S. - One of my pet peeves as a reader: If you’re not just reblogging, but writing long and potentially interesting posts, *please* make sure your Blog stylesheet supports clean printing. Print(ed) matter(s)! […]