Last modified: 2014-04-16 03:26:20 UTC
Wikipedia users find an article and want to print it. The Wikipedia layout is nice and clean for the screen. But for a printout there's still too much extra information that does not belong to the article, - most notably the menu links on the left (Main Page, Community Portal, ...) - and potentially also the menu links on the top (article, discussion, ...) The article print layout should just have the article beginning to end with all sources and the reference to Wikipedia. Thanks for your work! Björn Küstner
Did you try "print preview"?
What version of MediaWiki are you using, and what browser / OS are you attempting to print under? If I understand correctly, in later versions of MediaWiki, the print formatting is done via a skin, and only occurs when you use "print preview" or "print". When I do this, I get a very specific print of the article itself, with none of the excess info you're talking about.
Now imagine that: I never, _never_ actually printed like this because I was so sure that the printer would printout all the menus and everything. I mean, it's always like that on every other web page. Even this bugzilla page has a "format for printing" link at the bottom! So to avoid that in the past I always copied and pasted into a text document, then printed from there. I have now tried the preview and it works just like you said. That's elegant. Great. But I would be surprised if not many, many other users still run into the same thinking mistake like I have. Surfers are used to a "print" button. This is just against all experience and habit they have learned everywhwere else. It's like a Windows user on the Mac: "I want to shutdown this thing. Where's the 'start' menu?" It's habit. Now, a print button is a little bit more logical than shutting down from a menu named "start". Maybe you can still add a print tab at the top of the page alongside "edit" and "history". It would take users directly to the print preview as if they chose "print preview" in the browser menu. I'm happy now. Thanks for your quick help. My suggestion is only for the rest of the users. Thanks!
This is probably a duplicate of bug 259 / bug 265 / bug 906.
yes, but i'm going to retitle it and leave it open. i think a way to make printable version more obvious would be nice: this is a very FAQ.
Zigger: 259 seems covered in that "print preview" actually gives you a preview of the printed page. Just to get there is not obvious on the Wikipedia page, and that's different from 259 in my opinion. 265 fell for the same problem as I did:_He thought there was no printing view. Because there was, the case was closed. But the interface problem, i. e. Wikipedia leading users to believe that a print version of the article does not easily exist, was not solved. 906 same problem like I originally posted. I think keturner did the right thing: Take my request which was resolved in its original form but relabel it to something that describes the interface problem with the Wikipedia page. Thanks keturner and thanks Zigger for looking up the other requests.
[tweaked summary and tags to reflect request even better] One of the suggestions in previous discussions about this was for a JavaScript link that somehow triggered the browser's Print Preview function. However, it seems there is no standard way of doing this, so it might lead to some rather unreliable and tangled code. (See e.g. the thread beginning http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-October/#1978) Skins other than Monobook, I believe, retain a "printable version" link, even though they too simply use alternate stylesheets; this was considered undesirable for monobook partly because it detracts from the elegance of it being available automatically. Perhaps a special "fakeprint.css" could be added, so that the page could be displayed with the print style sheet, but with an extra message saying something like: "All pages printed from this website should appear in a similar style to that below when printed. This alternate display is here as a preview and demonstration only, and you should not need to load it before printing." The "fakeprint.css" could then simply be the print stylesheet with an extra rule making that message visible on-screen but not when printed. We could even label the link "print preview" - the idea being that hopefully people would spot the message and not bother reloading before printing in future. One final comment I found in my archives is that to minimise server load, we could look into switching the displayed stylesheet using JavaScript, rather than reloading the page. I don't know enough to expand on that, but I believe such tricks are possible.
From my simple user perspective I feel like Rowan Collins' suggestion of using a fakeprint.css captures the best of both worlds: - Provide to users the "print" button they expect - Communicate that this is actually not needed in most cases, so that users know to take the standard and short way in the future.
The "printable version" link in Classic provides precisely what the requester is asking for.
David, since I am the requester, I would like to understand your reply. Where or what is the >>"printable version" link in Classic<< ? I found no "Classic" nor "print" on the Wikipedia site. I googled for "printable version classic" and for "printable version classic wikipedia" but found nothing useful. I'm surely missing something obvious. Thanks.
(In reply to comment #9) > The "printable version" link in Classic provides precisely what the requester is > asking for. The "Classic" skin (and all other pre-"MonoBook" skins, such as "Nostalgia" and "Cologne Blue") have a redundant "printable version" link *because it was already there*. Rather than being removed (which would have been even more confusing than monobook not having one to start with), those links have been made to just include the print stylesheet as the display stylesheet. They are, in fact, counter-productive, as people think they are making a difference by clicking, when actually they could just print straight away and save the extra server hit. If we *were* to have a "fakeprint.css" (or "printpreview.css"), therefore, I would suggest its inclusion on *all* skins, in an attempt to educate people of the magic. The print stylesheet provided by *every* skin provides what the *original* requester was asking for. The point under discussion *now* is how best to *present* this feature to the user (again, in *every* skin, the misleading "printable version" links in old skins being equally unhelpful). The two counter-arguments to having such a link on monobook are 1) it misleads the user into thinking they *have* to click it (hence my "invisible message" idea) and the general ugliness of adding it (which clearly didn't apply to leaving it in the old skins) - as Paul Johnson described it 'a rather amateurish "click this for a printable version of our broken design" link'. Given how many people *don't* realise how it works, and reports of some switching skin to get back the printable version link even though it doesn't really do anything, I'm inclined to think we need to bite the bullet of the ugliness for the sake of "intuitiveness" and "user education". Like I say, we could even call the link 'print preview' rather than 'print version', and I imagine people would still click there before switching skins / requesting features. [For reference, see this bit of the MediaWiki-l archive: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-September/#1452 Particularly, http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-September/001474.html and http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-September/001464.html] [Meanwhile, why did this bug get switched back to "Wikimedia websites"? It's a request for a new feature in the software, to be used on *any* website, and therefore belongs under "MediaWiki".]
*** Bug 1703 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 1835 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #3) > Even this bugzilla page has a "format for printing" link at the bottom! Firstly, it's not at the bottom; it's above the comments. Secondly, users of this feature will suffer from exactly the same confusion they will on MediaWiki sites - even after clicking "Format For Printing", you still see the menu on the screen, but not in print preview. I think there should be another bug filed under MediaWiki pointing to this one.
The reason for the 'Format for printing' link in [Media|Bug]Zilla is that CSS can't take out buttons and comboboxes. I think we should just put a link that leads to a printable version page. Either that or use JavaScript to open a print dialog or display an alert saying that you just have to print. The print stylesheet must be improved, though. I have had spacing problems with it.
Added a printable tab for 1.5, made ?printable=yes force the print stylesheet in MonoBook.
*** Bug 259 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Moved it from a tab to the 'tools' section in the sidebar.
