Form fields cut off when printing

They have: 222 posts

Joined: Sep 1999

If I have a form field of size 30, and I type 40 characters into it and then try to print, only the first 30 characters will show up on the print-out. It sounds like a common problem that would have lots of workarounds, but I can't find anything about it in my searching. Any ideas?

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

What exactly are you wanting to work around? You are telling to only display 30 characters and that is what it is doing.

The only thing I can think of is somehow you have a "Print" button that calls javascript which changes the properties on the form fields, issues a print, then changes them back, but not sure if SIZE is something you can modify that way... Be interesting to see if people have a solution.

The better one I can think of is have print actually submit to a page specifically to be printed.

-Greg

They have: 222 posts

Joined: Sep 1999

I'm telling it to only display 30 characters because on a webpage you can scroll. You can't scroll on a print-out. It seems pretty obtuse for the browser to not handle that gracefully.

Submitting to a new page sounds like a good idea.

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

In general forms are designed to be filled out, not printed. They are for input, not output.

-Greg

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Greg is right, although it is a little weird that browsers don't print as shown on the screen. One possibility is to have the user fill out the form, submit it, then output a nicely formatted HTML page for printing.

a Padded Cell our articles site!

Want to join the discussion? Create an account or log in if you already have one. Joining is fast, free and painless! We’ll even whisk you back here when you’ve finished.