[Mediawiki-l] Re: How to generate "printer friendly" pages?

[Rowan Collins]

On 13/06/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> My favoured solution is similar to this but doesn't involve telling the
> user that their intuition is wrong, it just does the intuitive thing.
> The solution is to use a print icon, which when clicked, uses JavaScript
> to request that the page be printed. In most browsers this will
> immediately pop up a print dialog.

This is all very well, but unless it pops up a print *preview*, the
user will still be thinking "but it's going to print a load of rubbish
on the side, how rubbish". They'll be pleasantly surprised if they go
through with it, but whether a link to their print dialogue would be
sufficient to persuade them to try, I'm not sure.  Whether we like it
or not, people are going to assume our software is rubbish (where
"rubbish" = behaves in the obvious manner even where that is
unhelpful) until proven otherwise.  :|

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]