Pretty Printing
Still hard at work filling in the databases and getting content in the site. However, I did finally get around to doing the Print styles for the site. In case this is not familiar, this is a separate CSS style sheet that declares the formatting for printing. This is one of the strengths of CSS, in that the same page can be formatted differently for a variety of mediums. All of which is declared in the link "media" attribute. Setting the media to "screen" tells the browser that these styles are for displaying the document on the screen. Setting the media to "print" tells it that these styles are for printing. There are more, but they don't concern me right now and I have too much on my mind to get into them.
In case anyone cares, our site links to two style sheets. The one for screen display makes the site look as it does on your screen right now. However, the print style sheet hides most of that stuff. And here is why...
When I am printing a web page, I want the content on that page because it is important to me in some way. It had to be, otherwise I wouldn't have printed it. But nothing drives me more crazy than printing out a small amount of receipt text and watching as four sheets of paper come out of the printer. To my delight, all the banner ads printed out, as well as all the navigation buttons and header graphics that I absolutely don't need at all. After all, what good is navigation on paper. None.
So my theory was this, and I would love to hear responses and opinions about this, is that someone printing information from the Practical eCommerce website would want the content. They don't need the search box to look at. They don't want to waste printer ink and paper on banner ads they can't click. So when you go to print an article, or even the home page on this new site, the CSS styles are set to strip out everything but the content. Margins are set wide to get the most content on as little paper as possible. It sounds stupid, but it's all for you.
Like I said, I would be interested to hear what others have to say about printing web pages. It's one of my worst ePet Peeves, although it also used to be a source of office entertainment when I would print a web page and then, while I walked to the printer to retrieve it, I would wonder and bet with myself as to how many pages actually came out of the machine. Sometimes it was astonishing.
