Creating Passionate Users website printing problems solved in CSS

Letter to Kathy Sierra dated August 22nd, 2006, where I discovered some problems with printing pages from her blog: Creating Passionate Users.

This is a sidebar story to the blog post “See you at RailsConf, Europe this Thursday”

Hi Kathy.
I really enjoy your passionate articles on the blog.
I just found out that I had big problems printing your articles, as I want to use one of your articles as inspiration for a workshop.Print preview in Firefox shows the problem: The main article is printed on a page for itself (but has a “overflow:hidden” rule applied), which means that the article and all comments are ony given one page of print. Besides, left and right column are both printed on separate pages (which for me was a waste of paper: I want the article).I had a look at the HTML + CSS and found the problem. This added at the bottom of your CSS file should sort the problem:

@media print{
#center{
margin: 2em;
width: 90%;
overflow: auto;
}
#left{display:none}
#right{display:none}
}

If you want to use it, please do so. Let me know if you have any other questions.
I’ll appreciate if you’ll link to my blog at http://justaddwater.dk/ if you find it appropriate.

Kind regards,
Jesper

PS besides this, I also think you should add you logo to the print pages. Let me know if i can help you with that.
PPS. I’m attending RailsConf, and looking forward to see you presenting :)

—

—
Jesper Rønn-Jensen
Capgemini Danmark A/S
Oernegaardsvej 16
DK – 2820 Gentofte
Denmark
Blog: http://justaddwater.dk/

4 Responses to “Creating Passionate Users website printing problems solved in CSS”

  1. Jacob Angel Says:
    January 12th, 2009 at 10:53 (GMT-1)

    I know this post is very old … but it popped up when I was looking for a CSS solution for WP.

    I’m curious, did you ever hear back from Kathy Sierra? How did she react to your suggestion?

  2. Costa Says:
    May 6th, 2009 at 08:38 (GMT-1)

    That is probably the exact reason why I get weird printouts of my site. CSS may be the culprit here. Adding media print to the sheet may help. I ll be applying the code to see if that changes it.

  3. Joe Says:
    May 11th, 2009 at 19:56 (GMT-1)

    Just like Jacob, I was looking for a solution for a CSS problem I was having with another WordPress site I have. Turns out this wasn’t the problem, but I kept the information anyway, in case I need it for future reference.

    CSS is really kicking my ass, lol

  4. Uroda Says:
    January 7th, 2012 at 23:04 (GMT-1)

    So what was her response? Did she linked to your blog from hers?

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