On Oct 7, 2006, at 8:01 PM, Mike Emmel wrote:
On 10/7/06, Rob Burns <robburns1@mac.com> wrote:
I disagree this has nothing to do with webkit: Is the webkit team aware that when printing half of all the web pages out there the output looks like doodoo?
Whatever the CSS, having the pages print out in a totally ugly way is just plain silly. Surely using the "screen" stylesheet for printing is better than no stylesheet at all?
I propose that WebKit use the "screen" stylesheet for printing if there is no "print" stylesheet present in the source document.
I think half of all web pages out there is probably an exaggeration. I think most authors use "all" for the media type unless they are specifically targeting the screen. The Surfin' Safari blog had discussed a common mistake of using device dependent units when using the "all" media type, but I guess WebKit already adjusts for that. I could imagine a site targeting the screen with a design really only meant for the screen. Printing using that CSS would be worst than falling back on the default stylesheet.
take care, Rob
Since the case of a screen only css style sheet can be detected does it not make sense to make using it an option of the print dialogue. In fact a more general ability to pick a alternative style sheet when printing might have other uses. Or this could be a user option in the browser turned on by default. Or it could cause a warning or alert and let the use choose.
The chance of no style sheet vs screen only being correct in the real world is probably close to zero.
As I said before, I think this is a discussion not too related to WebKit, but more to the application developers who may use WebKit or any other engine to create a user-agent. My understanding is that WebKit already has the needed methods to handle this at the application level. However, let me just add that CSS is designed to give authors rich capabillities in terms of presentation and when an author selects "screen" instead of "all" as the media they're targeting for their stylesheet, that says something. And it's something that user-agents and users themselves should take seriously. Could it be a little mistake with large consequences? Yes. But it couls also be the authors intent. And building user-agents that gloss over those mistakes just make the mistakes more prevalent. So if many authors use a WebKit based application to test their designs and that application makes "screen" seem like "all" then such mustakes will proliferate. That's a concern that application developers should keep in mind. take care, Rob