Printing from browser screen

[danh]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering if anyone could tell me if they've had experience with printing from the output within the browser window to a paper form or address labels fed into a printer.

I am pulling records of names and addresses of people from a database using ASP 3.0 which are output to the screen. I need to have all the addresses printed onto name/address labels which are fed into a local printer. One important thing to note is that there could be several sheets of labels that need to be printed to (4-5 approx.) Obviously I need to set up the output on the screen in a template that will match the format of the printer labels. My main concern is that everything stays formatted while printing from the browser window onto 4-5 pages of labels. Does anyone have advice they can offer in this area?

[danh]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your suggestion. I was on the Adobe site and I didn't see a server side software package that offered the ability to create PDFs on-the-fly. If they make a product like that, it may be in another area of the Adobe site. I'll double-check to make sure.

There will only be a select group of individuals who will be accessing the utility I'm building (about 5 or so). I'm HOPING that if they all use a standard web browser like IE 6, the names&addresses will be fomatted on the screen properly with HTML and CSS and they'll print out all right.

Are you saying that most browsers don't support CSS2? I'm not familiar with CSS2 and it's capabilities over CSS. What are you referring to specifically?

[danh]

Dave,

Just another thought- Since you mentioned server-side PDF generation, I wonder if server-side generation of a Word document would be possible from my ASP code and database. Have you had any experience or knowlege of this?

[david2105]

I've used the above control to set print margins, paper size, number of copies, etc..

http://www.meadroid.com/scriptx/indexa.htm?topic=http://www.meadroid.com/scriptx/docs/index.htm

Along with this line of html code

<p style="page-break-before: always">

placed in your code/page where you want it to break when printing.

[danh]

Hi David2105,

Thanks for sharing this information and link. I'll visit the site and check it out. Does it work on the client side, so nothing needs to be installed on the actual web server? If so, that would be great.

[NatuScape]

My two pennies: http://www.pureforms.com/

I've used their PF Print Merge application for a test run. We ended up not needing right away, but it seemed like a cool product.

Cheers!

Natalia :)

[david2105]

hey danh,

The control needs to be installed as an ActiveX plug on the client side. You can put an auto-download section into your web page coding for this.

[danh]

Natalia,

Have you used PF Print Merge to dynamically generate PDFs from a database that is accessed via the web? From looking at their website it looks like something you have to do from your desktop.

[danh]

Hi David 2105,

I don't think it's a problem to have web visitors download the client side control for ScriptX. Does the control work with dynamically generated pages; created by ASP pages and a database? In my case, I wouldn't just be printing static HTML pages, but rather pages that are generated from and ASP page and a database.

[david2105]

Yeah printing ASP is no problem. That's what I've been using the control to do. Basically it'll print anything that can be opened in an Internet Explorer IFrame.

[danh]

Hi David 2105,

Glad to hear it has no problems printing output from ASP files. So the control essentially acts as though it were an Iframe?

What type controlled printing have you done with it from ASP files?

[david2105]

I have printed a variety of pages varying from reports (Basically a table listing all records queried from a database) to Individual records displayed in a form. I have also printed large documents filling in dynamic information. Some of these are as large as 100 pages!

You can change all four margins, the header and footer, the orientation (portrait or landscape) and some other options that I haven't used that much.

[danh]

Hi David2105,

It's good to know you've been able to use the control to print that many pages. Have you printed to multiple forms back-to back? For instance, filling in information from a database and printing to a 4 page form?

Have you used the pay/full-featured version before? Or have you done everything with the free version?

[david2105]

I've found the basic control did everything I needed. I have managed to print three copies of the same form with different footers. I'm sure you culd use this control along with a variety f other techniques to print the documents you need.