Let Firefox has a built-in printing/printer profile system.
I have several different printers connected to a computera t my workplace. I use them for different purposes accordingly. Just to list a few for instances: - a HP printer (just a normal A4 document printer) - a Epson A3 printer (to print on A3 paper mainly) - a barcode printer (to bulk-print on a roll of barcodes with ink ribbons) - a receipt printer (for POS purposes)
Since my workplace is pretty small in size, this computer is supposed to be a all-in-one computer for the workplace. By employing different web apps, this computer is a POS system, a stockkeeping system, a product design work station and also a general office computer.
Sticking with one browser - Firefox, I can easily log in to different websites to perform different tasks. I have different printers installed and I can choose the printer I want via the Firefox's print dialog box. When I work on a design related project, I pick the A3 printer. When I am serving my customers and using my computer as a POS system, I pick the receipt printer. When I am doing stockkeeping and I have to print barcodes for my stockkeeping system, I will pick the barcode printer. When I do general office work, I will print with my HP A4 printer. You get the idea.
My problem is that different printer needs different settings! For examples, when I print with my A4 printer, I would like to have all the default print settings that Firefox has initially. When I print with my receipt printer, I would like to hide all the headers and footers and have the print margins set specifically to a set of values. When I print with my barcode printer, I would like to have no print margins. When I want to print with my A3 printer for design work, I would like to have the printouts in landscape format. Also, when printing from the POS web app, I would love to have the settings in config to turn on: print.always_print_silent . I have this set to true for a period of time before, until I realise the recepts often come out incorrectly from the wrong printers.
I see that Firefox let me pick different printers and let me control all the margins, headers, etc... but it is very repetitive and troublesome when I want to switch from one printer to another and go through the trouble to reset everything. When my customer is queueing to pay for their purchase, I want to print the receipt straight away and not waste another second to bother with all the print settings.
So, I am kindly asking if Firefox should have a built-in (or via add-on if not possible) printing/printer profile support. Let say when I am on a certain URL or domain, I can preset on Firefox, saying all the printing under this domain will use "print profile X" and when I print, Firefox will have preset for me which printer to use, what margins/header/footer to set for, which protrait/landscape format to use, whether to print silently, etc... Even if this feature is not designed to be URL/domain-specific, may be Firefox can also prompt users which profile to use in addition to which printer to use?
For the moment, the only solution to my problem is to use different browsers - each browser to memorise a separate set of print settings, i.e. one web app per one browser. This is definitely a very messy way to manage my printings, but it works somehow. My colleagues, who are not very skillful with computers, do not need to worry much about all the technical details for printing. All they need to remember which browser to use for what tasks. But ultimately, if we can do everything on Firefox, isn't that a whole lot better? With a printing/printer profile support, my colleagues can just click on a bookmark to go to a specific web app, do their work and just press "Print"... job done! :-D
I am sure this will be really helpful for me and many other people all over the world. As serious/professional web apps are becoming very popular nowadays and people do not use a web browser to only surf the web for leisure. We also use a web browser to do tasks that were traditionally done with desktop applications. Traditional desktop applications often have a upperhand that they can communicate better with hardware, or at least, have better management/adaptations for hardware, just to ease users' day-to-day work. With the above suggestion I've made, I believe Firefox can do a little bit more but leap a big step in market share, expecially in the area where people who use a browser for serious work.
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" But ultimately, if we can do everything on Firefox, isn't that a whole lot better? With a printing/printer profile support, my colleagues can just click on a bookmark to go to a specific web app, do their work and just press "Print"... job done! :-D "
You can setup a Firefox Profile for each application (program) that requires a specific Printer and / or specific settings for a Printer that might be used by different applications. Simply create a desktop shortcut for each Firefox Profile that you create for each Printer / Printer settings, editing the Command Line to launch the specific Profile. And by using the -no-remote parameter you can have multiple Profiles running at the same time; except for the Default Profile, that is. The Default Profile needs to be launched before any other Firefox processes are running.
See this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options
And read this for using the Profile Name: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options#-P_.22profile_name.22
Plus this about the -no-remote command line option. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options#-no-remote