Member Avatar for EnderX

I've been working with a css file to produce a few bits of needful output formatting for some php-built reports that are designed to be printed from the web. Recently, though, on one of our systems, I had an incident where it looked as though part of the css was either not processing, or was getting mislaid on the way.

The statement in question is

@page

{
    size landscape;
}

, a CSS2 instruction that is supposed to format the page in landscape orientation for printing purposes. The nature of my reports (rather wide layout) means that I need to be able to print them landscape if possible. This instruction isn't supported by every browser (notably, IE doesn't seem to support it), but the Firefox browsers we use inhouse do seem to do so.

Recently, though, I had to transfer one of my report-generating programs to another box in order to show the boss what I've got done so far. Both this system and my dev box are running Windows XP. Both of them have Firefox on them, version 1.5.0.12.

On my dev box, the CSS2 instruction works; printing the web report automatically prints it in landscape version. On the other box, when the report opened in Firefox, printing it caused it to come out in portrait orientation until my boss manually swapped the layout.

I don't know anything about why this might have happened. Would someone mind please giving me some kind of pointers to possible causes, or to areas of possible difference on the two systems I should be taking a look at?

Thank you for your consideration.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by MidiMagic
Member Avatar for MidiMagic

Do you have the same printer?

Some print drivers ignore such operations.

Are the browsers configured for the same security settings?

Some browsers have settings to deny permission for such operations.

I consider such a style to be a security violation. Those settings on my computer are mine, not the property of some web author.

Why not just put instructions on the page to open the file menu and change the print setting to landscape? It will go away when the browser closes.

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