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Chapter 5 - Printing

Why am I bringing up printing? The reason is, have you ever tried to print out a webpage and the words get cut off when it prints on paper??

If you've ever said yes, then that's where printing comes in.

Example: If you want to print out this page, you will have to set your (left and right) printer margins to 0.25, as oppposed to your standard 0.75.

To change your printer margins in Internet Explorer, go to File -> Page Setup.

Why is this happening? Well technology is getting more advanced and therefore the monitors screen sizes are getting wider and wider, however the size of the standard 8.5" by 11" paper have not.

Also video cards are more advanced now and thus can handle higher and higher resolutions. From the days of "640 x 480" to "800x 600" to "1024 x 768" to "1280 x 800", etc. So in order for webmasters to design a website based on the MOST popular monitor resolutions, which happens 1024 x 768 pixels since 2002, the ability to print an entire webpage out on one paper without being cut off was sacrificed.

If you are planning to create a website so that people can print properly on a paper, you should set the area of your webpage to be no more than 800 pixels.

If you are planning to create a website so people don't have to use a horizontal scroll bar at 800x600 resolution, the area of you webpage should be no more than 760 pixels.

Approximately every 72 pixels is about 1 inch.

The printing problem has been around for a few years. Which isn't long compared to the history of the computer. But it is an annoying problem for visitors who like to print webpages out to read on paper?

I'm sure as technology changes and improves, this printing problem will go away. But for now, we'll just have to resort to tweaking our page setup properties to get the pages we want printed.

OR webmasters need to consider what kind of monitor resolutions they want their webpages viewed in.

As for me, I would like my webpages to be BEST VIEWED IN 1024 x 768.

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Next Chapter -> Chapter 6 "Images"

Lasted Updated: April 24, 2007