Print CSS, Showing URLs, Caution

Jens O. Meiert, June 14, 2011 / August 2, 2011.

This entry is filed under Web Development, Design, User Experience.

Print style sheets are awesome and easy to write. Site owners and developers caring about print typically have a feel for what to do. Alas there’s one thing that’s getting done rather the wrong than in any right way: displaying URLs, easily accomplished via the content property.

Figure: I’m (http://example.ms/) so glad (http://example.ms/happiness) we are talking about this (http://example.ms/present).

Popular Mistakes

Two.

Not having any data on how many users actually print out a document, then memorize or get back to a machine later to type in or save a URL they’ve seen on the print-out. (I don’t know any either. There may be none.)
Displaying URLs in the wrong context, namely regular copy (see example above). While you may maintain optimism that the URLs are actually used later, they do but one thing: disrupt the reading flow and hence start off doing more harm than good.

As always, exceptions prove the rule: a link list print-out, for example, may benefit from including target destinations. Just exercise caution please.

Enjoy the most popular posts, possibly including:

Comments

On June 14, 2011, 11:40 CEST, Leon said:

Yes, it’s always a disappointment to find a site which consists of lots of articles neglecting print styles; as you say, it’s not difficult to implement.

Still, if you do find such a site, I’ve found the readbility plugin useful (https://www.readability.com/addons). It has a print button and produces a nicely formatted document.
On June 14, 2011, 16:57 CEST, a Mint.com user who wishes that site used print style sheets said:

if you wanted a project that unhappy users would probably kick in some money to pay for, the Mint.com money management site (owned by Intuit) doesn’t have a print style sheet, an epic fail for a personal money management site where people will want to print out reports.

http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/searches?page=2&query=print&sort=recently_active&style=topics
On June 15, 2011, 17:27 CEST, Ben Buchanan said:

At a previous job a coworker came up with a solution that created numbered footnotes with the URLs. It’s a nice balance between losing the data and making the text hard to read.
On June 15, 2011, 17:32 CEST, Jens O. Meiert said:

I’ve seen such solutions, some of them quite smart, but they’ve usually been a pain, with quite a toll on the markup end. Did your coworker happen to write about or publish the solution?

Unfortunately, comments are closed.

Jens Meiert