🚀 go-pugleaf

Recently, nospam.vbien@smartchat.net@smartchat.net wrote:

>   Developing web pages for a customer I ran slap bang into the
> following problem that just goes to remind me/us how much I/we
> benefit from the OS/2 quality environment which the "mass" market
> orientated Windows environment, with its main focus to make money
> and all that razzamataz, is apt to fail you for real work the
> moment you take your eyes off them.
> 
>   I assumed (reasonably I think even though there is that adage
> that "assumptions are the mother of stuff ups") WYSIWYG.
> Basically what I got on the screen is what I get printing out
> from the OS/2 Warp 4 environment I do my work on.  I assumed all
> would be well.
> 
>   However, I was shocked at how the pages don't behave themselves
> on my client's Windows machine and presumably other Windows
> machines (I confirmed that there are problems by using my own
> Windows test machine).
> 
>   It appears both Windows browsers have problems.  With Internet
> Explorer one page which should print 4 pages started to print 
> 91 000 of them on my client's machine mostly blank!  He just had
> to stop the printer.  While I couldn't get 91 000 pages I got
> weird behaviour with a table used as a box to highlight some
> text.  Another page which should print 2 pages printed 16!  The
> box which should occupy about half doz lines spread itself out
> over many pages with one line of text each page!  What is further
> strange is that Windows Netscape shows the correct image in print
> preview but when you actually go to print you get rubbish!  The
> Windows HPLaserjet printer driver works fine for other things,
> indicating the problem is in Netscape.
> 

My experience has been that *NO* browser does a good job of printing 
website material. If you're planning a site that depends on good 
printouts, better use PDF, I think. And of course that means you need 
additional constructs to "get the plugin" and hold their hands while 
they install them.

I do like the capability of CSS to overcome this, based on some recent
designs I've seen, but if your site requires CSS-enabled browsers you 
are cutting yourself off from a lot of people.

But your story points out one of the hidden costs of website design, 
because I think you *do* have the obligation of testing the site on a 
number of browsers. Not just IE and NS in their most current hotshot 
builds, but also at least one of the earlier builds of each. Plus 
whatever garbage AOL is forcing people to use, if your site is 
mass-market enough to want to stroke AOL users. Plus the Mac version 
of NS. Plus the rest. Only the simplest HTML construction displays 
approximately the same in all these browsers, but you also have to 
give up things like colored text (which means you have to keep 
backgrounds white, or very light) and nested tables.


-- 

Good luck,

Buddy

Buddy Donnelly
donnelly@tampabay.rr.com