[IxDA Discuss] Guidelines for opening a printer-friendly page

[Katie Albers]

My personal experience, and the experience of (non-professional) 
people I've discussed this with is in line with yours, Owen. If I 
push the "Printer Friendly" button, I expect to see what the printer 
will print and have the opportunity to change my mind if I don't like 
what I see.

Frankly, part of the reason I prefer this option, is that I can cut 
and paste the content to save or send. Too often those options on the 
original site save or send the link and then -- in a year's time -- 
you have a useless link.

Further, as a user, the display of the content in a printable format, 
is what I expect to see when I select the "printable format" type 
button, that's what I expect to see...and users' expectations are 
critical in this applicable.

Katie

>  >  Without a 'Printer Friendly' pop-up, they would need to use the 
>bowser 'Page
>>   Preview' to view the page in this manner.
>
>If I click on a print button on a web page, I expect to /see/ the
>printer-friendly version. If the button just pops up the browser's
>print dialog, my reaction is to wonder whether I'm really going to get
>a printer-friendly version. Am I out of touch/crazy/paranoid?
>
>>  if there's a particular page that people are urged to
>>  print, you can just include a button that calls upon the system's
>>  printing mechanism, and you don't need a separate page
>
>Our goal is to make pages in general print-friendly, and to offer the
>print option for particularly print-oriented pages.
>
>When talking about the context of a web application that users will be
>[-come] familiar with, we might be able to make the assumption that
>they will learn that pages are printer-friendly by default, but I
>don't think you could assume that users at large would know that. Even
>a web-savvy user doesn't know ahead of time whether the page has a
>print stylesheet, unless it's by experience.
>
>Or is my experience out of touch with what others have observed?
>
>   Owen
>
>----
>Web Developer
>Athens County Public Libraries
>http://www.myacpl.org
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-- 

----------------
Katie Albers
katie at firstthought.com