O/T. HTML printing problem..........

[MrConfused]

I have uploaded an HTML document to my WEB site. It looks fine on screen. However if I print it out (via explorer) the font size increases vastly and it looks a mess. I suspect this is a well known problem as I have often seen "printer friendly" documents on the WEB. How do I make my document likewise? At the end of the day I need to upload a document that anyone can print out that looks the same as the on-screen version.

Thanks.

[Comatose]

I have uploaded an HTML document to my WEB site. It looks fine on screen. However if I print it out (via explorer) the font size increases vastly and it looks a mess. I suspect this is a well known problem as I have often seen "printer friendly" documents on the WEB. How do I make my document likewise? At the end of the day I need to upload a document that anyone can print out that looks the same as the on-screen version.

Thanks.

Sorry Mr. Confused, This Doesn't appear to be a visual basic question. It appears to be an explorer question, and so I am moving this thread to a browsers section of the site.

[DaveSW]

Hi Mr Confused
The traditional way that you have seen 'printer friendly' pages is using the server to strip out menu code etc and provide the content only in a 100% width column for the printer.
It is now possible to create printer friendly websites with print stylesheets.
These are more compatible with pure CSS designs than table layouts, so you might experience some difficulties, unless you have already converted.
You might want to read: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/

I guess the critical issue you may be noticing is that backgorunds don't print. This means a website will rarely look the same in print as it does onscreen. It is possible to 'work around' this (so long as you don't use too much of your users ink) by absolutely positioning images (using CSS) to replicate the screen look of the site.
Most people however will still prefer your site not to print backgrounds.

Hopefully this helps you somewhat, but getting a website to display and print exactly the same is going to be difficult, unless you are an experienced designer with CSS skills.

Regards
Dave