Can't change page size in print preview
I can click the menu button, then "Print..." to bring up a print preview window. But there appears to be no way to change the printer or its preferences (including the page dimensions) within the print preview window. The print preview appears to use the same settings as the last time I printed something in Firefox. So the only way to change the settings is to actually print something. (or fake printing by printing to a file) This renders the print preview function much less useful than it should be, as the scale and margin settings in print preview can only be effectively previewed when the correct page dimensions have been set. This is a seemingly bizarre limitation that I've never encountered in other software. Print preview isn't much of a preview if it only reflects my printer preferences *after* I print.
I tried changing "print.save_print_settings" to false in prefs.js and erasing all of the other print settings. That prevented Firefox from saving the settings of each new print job, but it did not cause Firefox to read the currently set printer preferences from Windows. It just made Firefox use some default preferences instead of the preferences I had set.
All Replies (3)
Which was installed first the Printer software or the Browser? Sometimes when what is installed can affect setting in each other settings. So can you show a example screenshot of the PrintPreview options so others can see what your getting on your side to compare.
Firefox's printing features are pretty basic. I also can't think of a nice interactive way to change your default printer before actually using that printer. I'm only aware of the arduous manual method:
(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful or accepting the risk.
(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste print_pr and pause while the list is filtered
(3) Double-click the print_printer preference to display a dialog where you can enter the name of the next printer you want to use, then click OK
The name you enter needs to match the one Firefox uses as shown in the Print dialog, for example, Adobe PDF or PDFCreator. Obviously if you have long printer names, this becomes more of a pain.
If you need to change this often, you could either:
- keep this tab open
- bookmark
about:config?filter=print_printer
Thanks jscher2000, but yeah, that's too manual. I'm not going to go into about:config to change printer preferences each time I change paper sizes. It's far easier to print from Firefox to a dummy file with the preferences set the way I want using the driver's preferences GUI. Then the next time I go to Firefox's print preview, it's previewing based on those preferences.
Firefox's inability to change printer preferences in the print preview window strikes me as a critical flaw, and not a mere limitation of its printing abilities. You can't even get an accurate count of how many pages it will print to, not to mention seeing how the pages will be laid out and the effect of scaling.
WestEnd, I'm talking about printer driver's preferences that you get by clicking the "Properties" button from the system print dialog box, or by clicking "Printing preferences..." from the context menu on the printer in the system Printers folder, or by clicking the "Preferences..." button from the printer's properties. The preferences are different for every printer, as they are a function of the printer driver.