hello mac,

There are 3 tiny dots in the URL bar that provides options for printing. The new option is called screen shot.

Try going back to that page, then see how the screen print works for you.

personally, i would like to see the page margins be skinnier.

You can try this extension.

• Printable https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/printable-the-print-doctor/

~dbben, that feature is nice, but you end up with a long "scroll" image file instead of individual pages. If you use another app to expand the content to fill the width of 8.5x11" pages, you end up only getting one page and/or a blurry image (ie. macOS Preview).

cor-el, add-ons are nice and I already make use of Print Edit WE, but have to play a game of trial-and-error between the print preview and what actually comes out, going back and forth until I get the right combination of false previews and real output. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit-we/

What Firefox needs, is a fully working printing engine... something it has not really had in recent years.

The Mozilla team has made some strides recently, but I posted this to perhaps help them narrow down some outstanding issues with the web page -to- printed page conversion.

i've always had issues with printing from browsers. part of the problem is that websites use a variety of codes that makes them all different code-wise but seemingly appearing the same for peopl;e-wise.

if all sites had a print-ready button on their webpages, then this feature would remove all those superfulous codes that impede the printing. but most siets dont want their pages printable.

the print screen feature by FF is nice. but not perfect.

while i dont use this anymore, there is also an add-on for FF for printing html pages to file. and then (if i recall) i could open that html file in a pdf program for printing.

That is very true ~dbben. Wide diversity of code is certainly a big part of the printing issue, though it can be a strength in other areas.

The metric for me in recent years is that things I cannot print/PDF in Firefox can frequently be done fairly well in Chrome. The most common issue by far in FF printing has been missing/cut-off pages. Often you get one full page with perhaps a mostly blank leading page followed by blanks or nothing. This includes default FF profiles with little or no blocking.

Print Edit WE has a function to Fix Page Breaks which does a lot to correct the issue above. Just wondering why FF cannot do this built-in? I am not sure how much of this is a macOS issue vs. FF itself.

To be frank, I despise Chrome for a multitude of reasons (privacy/security is but one) but it has somehow become the main browser for the majority of world users. I do not value the tiny bit more speed (or perception of it) over the personal controls afforded in Firefox. Not sure what it will take to shift people's thinking on that one.

Granted, printing is not exactly a top-5 requirement for a web browser. Just unfortunate that printing has remained one of the Firefox's weakest areas for a number of years, well before Quantum and WebEx.

i agree

Print Edit WE has a function to Fix Page Breaks which does a lot to correct the issue above. Just wondering why FF cannot do this built-in? I am not sure how much of this is a macOS issue vs. FF itself.

There was a big push over the past year to fix print layout bugs, but I think the user interface changes have soaked up a lot of resources so many bugs remain. They are all on the "To Do" list but I don't know how soon they might get fixed.

The way the extension works is, I think, similar to mine (Printable, mentioned earlier): it assigns or removes style rules to work around the ones Firefox does not break properly. This can cause negative changes to the page layout, so it's just a workaround and not a solution.

That makes sense. Plus the Mozilla team do not exactly have Google/Apple level funding and resources to throw at problems. There are days when I wish I was one of these suddenly-wealthy tech folks and could throw a large chunk at Mozilla.

Slightly off-topic:

I overall endorse a lot of the things Mozilla/Firefox have done. I do wish there were a "legacy" browser for those who cannot upgrade. Basically an ESR variant that supports a much greater range of older systems. Lacking that, I encounter a lot of people using whatever they have and putting themselves at great risk. But again with the lack of mass funding/resources.

I am still frustrated about the decision to remove "Open Location" from menus. When helping users by phone, that was one of the easy ways to get them to a needed web site/page with out attempting ctrl/cmd-L which requires putting down the phone and breaking contact. There are just too many people who don't understand what "location bar" or variant descriptions means. "Open File" remains, yet so few actually use that feature. Go figure.

OK, I'm finished derailing my own thread. :)

I agree.

Thank you for your feedback and understanding, and support !!  :-)

I have submitted feedback to the mozi-techs to employ a feature for backing up either the o.s. or the browser before the process of upgrading proceeds.

and if the upgrading fails, the user can revert back to a functional state of "whatever" .

for now, i remind people they can invoke a system restore point or try to downgrade their FF.

Sadly, Restore Points only apply to Windows systems (if activated).

Some kind of "fall back" feature would be most critical in FF upgrades where the profile would not be permitted to run on a previous version, unless there were a public tool to help users "fix" their profile if there were a problem (ie. FF update fails, user goes back to previous FF but profile is flagged by later version making it unusable). Having profile archives of some sort could start filling drive space, but it would save many non-tech users a LOT of time and frustration. Though I cannot remember the last time a FF update was permitted on a system that did not support it, but you never know.

(Something like this is badly needed in the mobile device app system: Being able to "rewind" to the previously installed app version in case something goes wrong. But so far this has not been a significant issue for FF on iOS, Android, etc.)

hello mac,

i took a closer look at your issue by testing in both FireFox and Microsoft's Edge browser.

In both browsers, i am seeing errors with the pages.

But the error is clearly notiable on one of the last pages where there are 6 images, but do not fully display for printing.

As such, i am leaning towards the page design as being faulty. While it looks pretty in the browser, i think there needs to be additional codes added or more formatting when it comes to printing via the browsers.

In other words, html codes on webpages sometimes interferes with the proper printing and the old wysiwyg, aka what you see is what you get.

How was the menu created? On what software?

Unfortunately, I do not know their site creation details. This site (nolas.com) came up while I was helping a client print/PDF so they could more easily read it on different apps. Perhaps this was a bad example. There are others I cannot recall at the moment, but they may also be code issues. Looking again at my original example, it has immediate complications due to the "filtering" feature of the categories up top.

Your point is taken, though. WYSIWYG printing has certainly not been "mastered" in the arena of web browsers. Mostly I imagine this is due to the fact that each page or site is potentially using very different code to achieve an effect and may not have been tested on all browsers or versions. MS Word naturally has much greater control over the printing process.

In some cases I suspect printing issues may be intentional (ie. paid subscription news sites). New York Times is one site that seems to convert extremely well so they must put some energy into that feature.

The newer "screenshot" feature in FF would be a great solution if it had a way to break the image into document-sized chunks (pages) for easier viewing and printing. One thing at a time I suppose. :)