Comments on: Why can't Firefox print as well as Internet Explorer?

Printing seems to be at the bottom of Mozilla's priority list. It's time to make Firefox the equal of Internet Explorer in terms of printing Web pages.

[Ilgaz]

Basically it can't print well because it doesn't respect to the printing subsystem of host OS it is installed to. E.g. state of art printing subsystem of OS X along with type services isn't used at all.

[rowdydave]

I'm sorry, but how is this a "digital safety" issue? I guess anyone who gets a blog can use it to rant about their spilled milk "au jour".
How many hits did that "random" site get in the process?

[pauljweighell]

As more apps move to server based people will want more printing from web apps not less so both FF and IE need to print well.

Arguments about ?Standards? being more important is crap. ?Standards? are only a tool to get working stuff A to work with working stuff B and users don?t care about ?standards? if the basic app just don?t work...

[adville]

I find this post highly ironic given that C|Net news.com itself is a terrible site to print from. They preserve an arbitrary distinction between stories and blog posts, insofar as stories have a printable view, and blog posts do not. This is annoying, as more and more stories of news-like tone and depth are published on the blogs. I see that this post opens in what looks like a beta of the new site, so maybe they are addressing this, but there also aught to be an option to print the comments or not (since many people who print will only want the story).

Of course, this just highlights the previous comments that while browsers can be more forgiving in their print capabilities, the main obligation is on sites (like C|Net) to code themselves to be printable.

[rowanrook]

Mr Horowitz: You make a valid point. If you are willing to go to the trouble to install, there are a couple of FF add-ons which will convert a web page to PDF which should then print nicely... but I concede that is a roundabout way to obtain something which should work out-of-the-box. There's also an add-on called Nuke Anything which is useful for cleaning up a page prior to printing it. One thing I like about IE is the ability to print to a .XPS file... something like that, with a non-proprietary file format, in FF would be nice.

[wclanders]

Printing is a huge issue for printing. At work i have to remember not to use Mozilla for two of our apps. When i do a print print or print preview all i get is garbage.

[cnetraj]

Yeah....! Finally found something to tease on Firefox! Come on... I have been using Firefox since it was released. Yes, gone through all those changes and upgrades... I never had an issue printing on websites which were made on standards. I am not saying this is not an issue with Firefox. The beauty of Firefox is its extensions....the openness... Use the extension 'Screengrab' and capture the page and print! I don't think the printing issue has to be a top priority one as we all print very rarely from a browser.

> Use a GPS instead of printing maps!!!

[plamumba]

I think the comments here pretty much explain why Firefox sucks at many tasks. Rather than address the complaint, that it won't print many of these pages properly, the commenters complain that the person wants to print pages. Maybe they all work in support where everything is reduced to a user error. The fact that other browsers print these pages ok, or so the article says, makes moot the comments that it is the website's fault.

[James7777777]

"The fact that other browsers print these pages ok, or so the article says, makes moot the comments that it is the website's fault."



That's terrible logic. In this instance IE may have done what the poster wanted, but this is a case where buggy code was rendered incorrectly to product a usable output. If every example was like this you may be right, but we are discussing one website from the whole of the internet. I also explained why the website was wrong, they simply need to remove one line of css and the website will look the same and all browsers will print it properly. It's a lot easier to remove a single line of css (probably put in place by some wysiwyg editor or template) then it is to force Firefox to guess at what the coders intent was.

[thabassman]

Actually you can report sites. Go to "help" report broken webiste, and report away. I have been using it since launch. Many of the bugs have been fixed.

[Riquez-001]

What are they thinking at Microsoft? How could they devote time and effort to eye candy like new icons and drastically reworking the address bar when Internet Explorer so often fails at displaying HTML & CSS.

How did displaying HTML & CSS get pushed to the bottom of the priority list?

I read lots of Web pages on my screen and from the get-go Internet Explorer has underperformed when it comes to displaying Web pages. That issue and the slow start-up time, proprietary pseudo-html implementations, virus vulnerabilities are four constant annoyances endured by devoted IE users. It's been *quite awhile now*, and I think it's time that Microsoft get around to making IE the equal of in terms of displaying Web pages.

[sisyphus1]

"The great thing about standards is that there are so many of them."
What good is it that Firefox follows a "standard" if that standard is not followed by all?

[thinsoldier]

@skeese2
I just checked Firefox 3.0.3 on my MacBook and it only prints 1 page of content and 2 blank sheets. I've also tested it on every site I've ever built (both old table crap and modern valid html & css layouts) and it works and some pages but not on others for no apparent reason.

@James7777777
I removed every overflow:hidden in the 2 sites I was working on last week. Still have the same problems. And I don't see how you can blame a common css attribute and claim firefox is not in-the-wrong when Opera, Safari, IE6, and IE7 are printing the layout properly.

Now if there's an in-depth list of css techniques I should use in my print style-sheets to decrease the occurance of this problem then I'm begging for someone to point me to it. (overflow:hidden doesn't seem to be the cause of or solution to my problems at all.)


The majority slightly (or very) older people that real estate agents in my area have as clients all have computers and it seems many of them prefer to print things out to read and/or share with friends.

When the agents meet with clients they always want to leave a print out of the web page about the land/house they were discussing. They are very annoyed when they decide to put 2 dozen photos on the page and only the first 6 print because firefox for some reason won't print more than 1 page of actual content. Then they're even more annoyed when I want to charge them more to try to figure out the problem, then we're both very annoyed when after 4 hours of trial and error I have to give up, not charge them a dime, and tell them to use Safari or IE for printing their "flyer" page layout. (& this is after months (years?) of me nagging them do dump IE and saying how great FF is. Talk about embarassed.)

[latwater_1]

I came across this discussion while searching for an answer to this same problem.

I am using FIrefox 3.0.1 on a Mac OS X 10.5. When trying to print any page on my site that has a lot of content the first page is blank except for the banner at the top. Second page starts the content then it is cut off on the third page. This is the same behavior as Firefox on the Mac. In my CSS I have overflow:auto (I have also tried overflow:hidden with same results). When I remove this from the code then Firefox is able to print properly. (note all pages on the same site that have only one page of content print just fine)

Safari 3.1.2 - no problem with printing entire document with or without the overflow set.

Opera 9.51 - Entire document is available for printing. However, the content of the Web site (other than the top banner graphic) doesn't appear until the second page of the printout leaving the first page blank.

Windows Explorer 7.0.57 (on Windows XP 5.1.2600 - running on Parallels Desktop) First page is blank except for the banner at the top. Second page starts the content then it is cut off on the third page. This is the same behavior as Firefox on the Mac. Removing the overflow:auto from the CSS fixes the problem

FIrefox 3.0.1 (Windows NT 5.1) - same problem as on the Mac. Removing the overflow:auto code fixes the problem
Windows 7.0.5730.11 (Windows NT 5.1) - First page is blank except for the banner at the top. Second page starts the content then it is cut off on the third page. This is the same behavior as Firefox on the Mac. Removing the Overflow:auto from the CSS fixes the problem

One note: I am using "overflow:auto" (I have also used overflow:hidden but I think that it's safer to use "auto" because content will always be available) only because without it there is a gap appearing between the header area of my page and the body of the page. If there were another way to avoid this gap appearing then I would not need to set the overflow. Any ideas would be much appreciated!

[pete0]

You've only touched on half the problem . I have firefox 3.0.4 and a newer canon mx310 printer and I keep getting the spooler not turned on message . Prints in all the other browsers ,but not firefox. Tried all things in firefox help, nothing worked . print print printer , blah blah , everything. Out of frustration I downloaded a Windows resource kit tools and cleaned the spooler which forced me to reload my drivers.It worked , printed fine ; untill the next boot . Bam , spooler issue again . AARRG . IE has security issues , Safari is fuzzy, Chrome is , for me , too different , and Firefox won't print. Any other browsers out there?

[brewsterbythesea]

I would love to understand why this page http://clickbrochure.com/brewsterbythesea/brochure.html does not print correctly in firefox. IE works well. The point about having print code in the web page is well taken and a well formed example of that would be appreciated.

Cheers,