The full report can be found at www.cpbis.gatech.edu/resources/
stateofindustry/index.htm.
right side was usually cut off unless the user was smart enough to scale the design down
using the operating system??™s printer options.
This rigidity demanded an alternative page for printing, and thus print-ready pages
evolved. These pages commonly use very few tables and provide little visual adornment.
Plain blocks of Times New Roman and a few images are all too familiar.
To compound the problem, adding a separate ???printer-friendly??? button to a web page
introduces usability hurdles. People are used to printing documents from the main menu
of software; forcing them to use a nonstandard technique unique to that one site is an
invitation for confusion and frustration.
There are several scripts available to easily create print-ready pages. Most are JavaScriptbased,
and are designed to strip out ads and images to generate a naked design suitable for
printing. This sounds good in theory, but it suffers from the inherent limitations of JavaScript:
unpredictable behavior across different browsers, plus the risk of being deactivated.
For business websites, using web standards and a corresponding print-ready style sheet is
far more appropriate.
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