Printing (articles, blog posts etc)

[LiquidFractal]

I could be mistaken, but I seem to remember many moons ago in 3.x there was a print template which made blog posts and maybe(?) forums threads look pretty nifty.  If this is the case it seems to be a relic of the past now, as the only way to print articles is by using the at times extremely unsuccessful browser print option.  Firefox does a terrible job at formatting pretty much everything; the other browsers I've tried (Opera/Vivaldi, Chrome, IE) do blog posts ok (IE even lets you adjust margins on the fly; one of the few positives of IE I've ever seen).  But if you have multiple columns with blog or image feeds then everything goes to hell in a handbasket (especially for articles).  In any event, there is always skin/theme related garbage at the top of the first page that wastes space.

So maybe this idea isn't so popular in the digital age, but as one of those who much prefers to read in-depth ideas and arguments on paper instead of wearing away my eyesight at a computer screen (and so I can edit and add marginalia): I would like to suggest the idea of a print template that allows one to print a readable copy of an article or blog post.  If there's already something out there I'd appreciate it if someone could give me info.

Convert to PDF would be really cool too...couldn't find anything in a search, but I know other CMSs like Xoops, Drupal and Joomla have the option, at least as add-ons or something (it's been a long time since I checked out those other packages though).

[Marcher Technologies]

Might help.

[LiquidFractal]

Thanks for this, MT.  But am I missing something?  I pasted this code into my theme's custom.css file, saved the changes, but I don't see anything different - was I wrong in expecting to see a Print button or link or something?

[Marcher Technologies]

2 hours ago, liquidfractal said:

Thanks for this, MT.  But am I missing something?  I pasted this code into my theme's custom.css file, saved the changes, but I don't see anything different - was I wrong in expecting to see a Print button or link or something?

That is only meant to address the formatting when using the browser print button.

[LiquidFractal]

13 hours ago, Marcher Technologies said:

That is only meant to address the formatting when using the browser print button.

Hmm, well, as I said to @Jim M who said the same thing, I guess it isn't working for me.  I put this code on one theme and left the other clean as a test: I tried IE, Chrome, Firefox and Opera, blog posts, article and forum threads across both themes and when I check the Print Preview it's all the same - no specially formatted printer-friendly output.

[iacas]

29 minutes ago, liquidfractal said:

Hmm, well, as I said to @Jim M who said the same thing, I guess it isn't working for me.  I put this code on one theme and left the other clean as a test: I tried IE, Chrome, Firefox and Opera, blog posts, article and forum threads across both themes and when I check the Print Preview it's all the same - no specially formatted printer-friendly output.

Did you clear your cache? Are you using the default theme (or a child of it)?

It worked here.

[LiquidFractal]

I did clear the cache, but perhaps I missed a step or got confused - checking the differences more attentively, it seems as if the template is working, but the sitemap line at the top of each page (i.e. "Our Community > Forums > Sales, Feedback and Information > Feedback and Ideas > Product Feedback > Printing (articles, blog posts etc)") is always garbled.  Not such a big deal as the actual content is acceptably formatted.

One thing that might have tripped me up is that this template does not seem to work on Firefox.  I'm using FF 50.1.0 and every time I try the Print option (Forums, Articles etc) it always dsestroys everything, i.e. after one paragraph there are four blank pages where 90% of the content goes missing, then one or two more pages with the very bottom content.  Seems to work fine with every other browser I try though.