Letting users print a portion of a view

Rails
1

Any good tips on having a section of a view made printable in a cross
browser manner?

I’ll have a table with data and formating (data-dependent background
colors, tiny images before and after text data in cells) which is at the
core of my application. Users, after working with their data through
my application will want a printed copy to carry away with them. (its
basically a scheduling application).

The print button on Firefox seems to want to default to text only with
different font etc. It seems to me that what I almost want is an entire
div including the table turned into an image (rasterized?) and put a
print image button? Some sort of direction to a browser to print a
portion of a page including all formating would also work (I’d imagine
I’d need to test for browser type and give varrying instructions).

Sorry if this question isn’t necessarily a rails question(if there is no
uniquely rails solution).

2

You can define a print-only stylesheet. That’s the absolute simplest
way.
You can then use that stylesheet to hide sections of the page you don’t
want
to be printed. Look into that via the Google. :slight_smile:

3

Brian H. wrote:

You can define a print-only stylesheet. That’s the absolute simplest
way.
You can then use that stylesheet to hide sections of the page you don’t
want
to be printed. Look into that via the Google. :slight_smile:

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I really need to find a comprehensive and well written CSS book as the
online stuff I’ve found really is spotty.

4

Check out some of the archives at alistapart.com as they have wonderful
CSS
and web design articles, including some on printing.

5

Here’s a list of some good CSS books:

http://www.buildingwebapps.com/books/list?category=33

Michael S.
www.BuildingWebApps.com