Why can't Firefox print as well as Internet Explorer?

What are they thinking at Mozilla? How could they devote time and effort to eye candy like new icons and drastically reworking the address bar when Firefox so often fails at printing.

How did printing get pushed to the bottom of the priority list?

I read lots of Web pages in hard copy and from the get-go (version 0.8 or so) Firefox has underperformed when it comes to printing Web pages. That issue and the slow start-up time are two constant annoyances endured by devoted Firefox users. It's been quite awhile now, and I think it's time that Mozilla get around to making Firefox the equal of Internet Explorer in terms of printing Web pages.

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In Firefox 2, not one word of the article prints. Not a single word. Print preview shows one mostly blank page.

In Firefox 3, the first page is the same as Firefox 2, page 2 has the article and page 3 has some links from the page footer. But, the article is about 7 or so pages and page 2 has only the first page. In other words, Firefox 3 can't print the vast majority of the article.

Firefox is Lucy Ricardo. For those of you who recall I Love Lucy, I'm Ricky. I love my wife, Lucy, but sometimes she just does the craziest things.

Maybe it's time for Ricky to go to the Opera. Version 9.5 of the Opera browser, running on Windows XP, prints the entire article, although it also feels the need to start with an appetizer of an empty first page. Internet Explorer 7 prints the entire article perfectly, no blank first page.

Update August 20, 2008: A commenter below noted that Safari can print the article in question, I haven't tried this. The person didn't say however if it was Safari on the Mac or on Windows. I only tried Firefox on Windows XP, another commenter below said that Firefox 3 on a Mac printed this page fine. Firefox version 2 had an optional toolbar button to report web sites that didn't display well in the browser (the button looked like a spider web). Version 3 of Firefox eliminated this button, so problems like this can no longer be reported to Mozilla.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

[shawn1313]

"Firefox is Lucy Ricardo." Seriously, mozilla needs to hire you to run their marketing department.

[oedenfield]

Because how many people print web pages? 10 years ago it was a priority, today not so much. I like having the option there but I rarely print web pages.

[dagwud]

I print to PDF files all the time, because having an electronic copy of the article with the URL and date of access is important for proper citation. No paper, but I've run into the same problem mentioned above.

Plus, a PDF on my hard drive doesn't disappear because the site closes, the article gets deleted or, more commonly, the article gets moved behind a pay-for-access barricade.

[Rants&Raves]

Sometimes, a PDF of a page makes for a better reference than a bookmark which may reference a dead or reworked site later on.

Ummm... how about the need to print UPS and USPS postage labels from PayPal??? Or, copied of checks cleared against your bank account for record??? While printing is not the norm, there are certainly still needs for it.

[pinderH]

Hello, people still print labels, stamps, sporting event tix, and even AIRLINE tickets and passes, lecture notes, research papers.... shall I go on?

[andwrig]

I agree. Printing is an issue with Firefox. While printing web pages is not as important as it was 10 years ago, there are still times when it is called for and Firefox should be able to deliver.

[Kuko Ako]

I couldn't agree more. Printing will always be an essential functionality, no matter how rarely used. And just because something is rarely used doesn't mean it's OK for the results to be unreliable. Lastly, my hunch is that most users just want to print quickly and wouldn't want to be bothered with workarounds like having the "Open in IE tab" extension or highlighting the area that needs to be printed as a condition for getting a decent printout.

[Goodbye Helicopter]

This is not news.
This is barely journalism.
It is an op ed.
IE may print nicer than FF, but there is no list of websites....
The code of the page can also make a difference.
FF is focused on standards, IE never has been.
These things can make a big difference.
IE still does not render pages correctly.
Still does not handle CSS correctly.
It's better than it's ever been, but not right.
And you're worried about printing?
Smells like a shill...

[Get_Bent]

Following standards is great, but that doesn't excuse Firefox for not printing correctly. If FF can render a page correctly, then it should be able to print that page correctly, too. You shouldn't have resort to an add-on like Screengrab! to save the pages as graphics files just to get them displayed correctly.

Smells like a fanboy....

[neild92]

While I will agree that this isn't the most journalistic story out there, the fact that you are so caught up in the Firefox hype that you are actually suggesting that because IE is horrible at rendering and interpreting standards (which I agree with) that it causes it to print pages properly. Please. Safari can print the article just fine, and it's even more standards compliant than Firefox.

While the CSS may have a bit to do with it, it is mostly the browser's ability to correctly paginate and render the printed page.

If you are going to attack something with complete nonsense, make sure the thing your against isn't completely at fault.

[Java Jefe]

I got the website you mentioned to print the whole article by selecting it all and then telling Firefox to print the selection. No, this does not get the whole website, but who wants to print the ads and nav buttons anyway?

[mhinnewyork]

Interesting suggestion, I've done this a few times myself. The drawback is that there is no print preview this way. Michael Horowitz

[magicmaster]

Got a problem with printing? No problem, just post the bug on bugzilla (google "bugzilla").

But as Andwrig had correctly pointed out, the webpage printing is not the top priority here. People simply emailed the link (or the documents) to their peers, their peers opened it up and read it. That's way more economic and environment-friendly, plus it's faster.

[aerodromeusa]

Hey Guys, don't you get it. It doesn't print right. There are many times I have had to pdf a page to send it because the site is not available to the receiver. I have to click and paste into IE to get it to print. Talk about blindly defending a flaw because one has an agenda against Microsoft. Firefox got here because it was BETTER, not because people defended its flaws.

[mhinnewyork]

Very well said. Michael Horowitz

[seanw711]

Problem Solved !!
If you have the 'IE Tab' Addon installed in firefox 3 , then you can open a Tab in IE mode
or switch the rendering mode of your current tab to IE.
When you print preview , you will see all 8 pages !!

[cdeobald]

Uh, using the IE tab kind of assumes that I'm FF on Windows. That suggestion isn't going to help the Linux and Mac folks much. So, no, problem not solved.

[dude7895]

No one cares about macs/linux.

[skeese2]

I just checked Firefox 3.0.1 on my MacBook and it prints just fine.

[James7777777]

If you look at the css for this page you'll see that it has overflow:hidden; on the div contain all the missing content, then it specifies a width that can't work in print. Actually going over the css it's amazing this website works at all. Should browsers adapt to people writing crappy code, sure, but for firefox that's not the priority. They focus on standards and do it exceptionally well. Hire a web developer and get them to clean up your code, then have them write some print styles, once it's all standards compliant Firefox will print better then other browsers. Until then stop crying cause the website has crappy code and Firefox doesn't magically fix it.

[vuco]

You're right. I found the div with id="a-c_col1" with overflow set to hidden
and a defined width and an undefined height. In screen it has the effect
to control width but as the height is not defined, it becomes elastic. In paper,
if don't define the height, it will be the limited by page height.

I have the firebug extension installed and it allows me change the page on the fly. So, I changed the overflow to visible and it printed the entire page with no problems.

So, if the designer create a style with media="print", defining that this element has overflow:visible, it will print fine with changing absolutely ANYTHING in the
screen layout. So, the solution is just 3 or lines of css away...

So, someone tell networkworld.com (and many others) to hire designers
who know how to do their jobs. Otherwise the same old story will repeat
again and again: people use the "amazing" microsoft tools to generate
their content and these tools will "strangely" work well on MS platforms
and have some "little" problems in firefox...

[inception8]

I find that hard to believe. I was just at Google Maps and incidently needed to print out the area of the map I needed. Firefox 3 didn't seem to have a problem. The one and only page I needed was printed without error on the first try.

But then again Google maps is created with the idea that someone is of course going to need to print a page out. Apparently not all webpages these days are created equally, neither are browsers. In Firefox's case, thank goodness because if we were left to the will of MS we'd all be in dire straights wouldn't we.

I suspect that some day any need for both the combination of a printer and the paper will become obsolete. Where's my 8.5x11 'Star Trek' tablet so I can transfer that section of map to it and carry it with me on the road or take it with me wherever I want to go to read, something. No more paper. Now that would be a gadget. But then again laptops are getting thinner.

I'd say Firefox perhaps sees a day when printing, is a thing of the past.

[gara1961]

I have never used Firefox to print webpages. I may use Acrobat Distiller through Firefox to print to a file--that has worked without any problems for me. Obviously this guy is stuck on the past--especially if he's started to talk about Lucy Ricardo. Maybe this guy needs to be put out in the pasture with the rest of the oldies.

[pauljweighell]

i guess i am even older as i can spot that your comment is superfluous (look it up) as you don't even print from FF and so have no view worth hearing!

[ctwise]

It's an opensource project, the best way to get something fixed is to report a defect. So I've done it for you - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=451377. As to those defending Firefox - the behavior is just busted. I checked on Safari and WebKit (another opensource browser) does just fine.

[xilonic]

This is not new, FF has had printing problems FOR YEARS. The worst one is long tables that run over multiple pages - FF cuts off and prints blank or gray-shaded areas. There is a bug open on Bugzilla on table printing, but Mozilla believes this is a really-really-really low priority. It is unfortunate that Mozilla's geeks don't realize that table printing is a serious impediment for FF's entry into business area - it is simply not possible to print any financial report for your boss with Firefox.

[webmastercorey]

Just so when someone comes by this... I'm still having issues with large tables in FF 3.5.1. When you go to print the document it cuts off the second page where the runoff should be at. However, there is a work around that you can do. By selecting all the page CTRL+A and then selecting the "Print Selection Only" checkbox you can now see the rest of the content on the secong page.

I don't like that I have to do that, but at least it works. :) If anyone else knows a fix do tell...

[john55440]

Yes, Firefox should be fixed, so that it prints as well as Internet Explorer. There is no valid excuse for that flaw.

[allen b--2008]

For those of you who think that printing from a web browser is going away. Think again. Although for the common home internet user there is very little need to print, (although there has always been very little need to print for them) for the business user the amount of browser based printing is going to go up. And before someone attacks me for my non eco-friendly ways, this is about typical business printing. Businesses are going to more and more web based apps. From HR to AP, and you can't send links to your internal corporate app to allow someone to see their shipping invoice.

[James7777777]

I have written tables that print perfectly in all browsers including firefox, it's about adding the correct css.

tr {page-break-inside: avoid;}

There is so much pressure on browsers to render any piece of crap thrown at them perfectly, why not improve the code? Then browsers can focus on standards and improvements, rather then fixing flawed code. It's about time websites start hiring developers who know what they are doing rather then joe schmo who pirated frontpage.

[rcrusoe]

FF can't print as well as IE? Really? I didn't know that because my company hasn't allowed anyone to use IE for years.

[umbrae]

The author is uninformed. Printing of a site is controlled by the web site developer not the browser. Firefox prints web sites fine; however, as web sites focus on fancy monitor displays they HAVE to code the web site to print properly. That blank page you see is what is needed to display the web site to the screen. The developer would need to remove that from the print version.

Faulting Firefox for following the web site developers/owners instruction is not right. I would rather web sites print how I instruct them too than how Microsoft thinks they should. Instead of picking on Firefox for being standard complaint; blame crappy web development as it should be.