Firefox print preview problems

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I am trying to print from Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com, both of which use a similar layout. However, Firefox and IE both will not print more than 3 pages, with two being almost blank and one being the actual part of the page. The print preview for both browsers shows the same: two incomplete pages and one complete page, even though the webpage may be 10 or more pages. I’ve tried to resize the webpage with printing preferences and the page layout option, but nothing seems to work for either browser. If anyone has a solution to this problem, please let me know soon!

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I am trying to print from Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com, both of which use a similar layout. However, Firefox and IE both will not print more than 3 pages, with two being almost blank and one being the actual part of the page. The print preview for both browsers shows the same: two incomplete pages and one complete page, even though the webpage may be 10 or more pages. I’ve tried to resize the webpage with printing preferences and the page layout option, but nothing seems to work for either browser. If anyone has a solution to this problem, please let me know soon!

Whenever I print from these type web pages (I generally use Expedia or Travelocity) I highlight what I want to print first then only print the selected areas. Most of these pages have considerable frames that may not be able to be printed. Ctrl P the choose Selection (for most printers this is what is displayed).

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The print preview for both browsers shows the same: two incomplete pages and one complete page, even though the webpage may be 10 or more pages.

Ted’s workaround of selecting some or all of the page and using Print Selection bypasses a couple of problems Firefox has with certain style rules. (The screen display is fine, but they just don’t translate to printing.) These bugs have been logged for years, and sadly no one has stepped forward to fix them yet. Maybe in version 4?

One downside to using Print Selection is that the line of text at the bottom of a page may be sliced through horizontally, split over two pages. But it’s quicker and more accurate than copying and pasting into a Word processor document, so it’s still the workaround of choice.

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Ted’s workaround of selecting some or all of the page and using Print Selection bypasses a couple of problems Firefox has with certain style rules. (The screen display is fine, but they just don’t translate to printing.) These bugs have been logged for years, and sadly no one has stepped forward to fix them yet. Maybe in version 4?

unfortunately, these Firefox “print preview” bugs may not even get fixed in Firefox 4. I may as well use either IE8 or latest Opera browser to do print previewing on those sites.

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Thank you both for your prompt and helpful replies! Unfortunately, the print selection idea wouldn’t quite work for me, for two reasons. One, I just have too much information on the page to even begin to select it all; it would be rather tedious. Two, even when I attempt to do so, the printer only prints the URL at the top, and the page number at the bottom. The rest of all the pages are blank. So I do think it is simply a problem with IE and Firefox being unable to “read” or recognize the web page. This would explain why, when I attempt to print the page normally, I only get three pages, and the rest are not even printed.

Additionally, I have tried saving the web page as a text file, but when I open it with Word, all I get is the HTML language, and not the actual web page layout. I also tried copying the web page and directly pasting it into a blank Word document. It took forever to copy all that data, and even after it completed, the layout was all wrong and it was difficult to make sense of the flight schedules.

I think I might just have to avoid the web site, and use other flight search sites, such as those Ted recommended. If anyone else has a better solution, I’d be more than happy to hear it!

Thank you again for your help and suggestions.

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Unfortunately, the print selection idea wouldn’t quite work for me, for two reasons. One, I just have too much information on the page to even begin to select it all; it would be rather tedious. Two, even when I attempt to do so, the printer only prints the URL at the top, and the page number at the bottom.

Use Ctrl+A to select the entire page contents at once. In the Print dialog, look for a “Selection” option and click that bubble. Otherwise, the browser ignores the selection and tries to print the entire page.

WARNING: When I used Select All on Orbitz, I got an 18,919 page PDF.

If you want a pictorial representation that isn’t searchable but looks like the original, you could try the ScreenGrab extension[/url].

If you find other sites that are more efficient, by all means, use those. But I’m not aware of any others that offer a results table exactly like Orbitz.

== Edit ==

I found a workaround for the thousands of pages problem. Scroll to the end of your Orbitz results. Press Ctrl+A to select all, then Shift+click right before “Didn’t find the right combination” to end your selection after the flight list. Here’s the resulting PDF (note: LARGE file).

== Edit ==

On Orbitz, you can select just the results area using a bookmarklet. Copy the following to the clipboard, click in the Orbitz page after you get your results, then paste this to the location bar and press Enter. The flight list should be selected.

Code:

javascript:var sel=window.getSelection(); sel.collapseToStart(); var rng=document.createRange(); rng.selectNode(document.getElementById("resultSet")); sel.addRange(rng); void 0;

If you like, you can save this as a bookmark on the Bookmarks toolbar. After choosing to create a new bookmark and giving it a handy name, paste the code into the Location line.

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there are some very good free screen capture programs that allow you to capture just a specific area, an entire page etc this may be an option, having one that is not locked into the browser is nice in case you need to capture something not in the browser window. You can then save the capture in a form that you can save and print. I just helped my sister with this, she was trying to print from a webpage that would not allow printing, so using a screen capture program she was able to capture what she needed and then print from the capture.
when looking for good free safe utilities like that I go to Gizmo’s site for suggestions.
Best Free Screen Capture Utility

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I am trying to print from Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com, both of which use a similar layout. However, Firefox and IE both will not print more than 3 pages, with two being almost blank and one being the actual part of the page. The print preview for both browsers shows the same: two incomplete pages and one complete page, even though the webpage may be 10 or more pages. I’ve tried to resize the webpage with printing preferences and the page layout option, but nothing seems to work for either browser. If anyone has a solution to this problem, please let me know soon!

I used print screen then paste it in word 🙂

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I am trying to print from Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com, both of which use a similar layout. However, Firefox and IE both will not print more than 3 pages, with two being almost blank and one being the actual part of the page. The print preview for both browsers shows the same: two incomplete pages and one complete page, even though the webpage may be 10 or more pages. I’ve tried to resize the webpage with printing preferences and the page layout option, but nothing seems to work for either browser. If anyone has a solution to this problem, please let me know soon!

I use PDF Download or Page to PDF from Nitro, both of which are Firefox plug-ins. Neither of these plug-ins will work if the page is encrypted (https or ssl log-in), or if the data are in any way protected from capture (as in many E-Commerce Checkout or Invoice Pages). Primo PDF is a downloadable program from Nitro, which acts as a PDF document printer. All of these Nitro products are free for individual home use. My Epson all-in-one printer also has its own Web To Page utility for Windows XP, which does a decent job of managing irrelevant HTML and Frames clutter in Web Page printouts. For normally non-capturable data, sometimes Screen Grab works, but not always for protected data.

-- rc primak

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I use PDF Download or Page to PDF from Nitro, both of which are Firefox plug-ins. Neither of these plug-ins will work if the page is encrypted (https or ssl log-in), or if the data are in any way protected from capture (as in many E-Commerce Checkout or Invoice Pages). Primo PDF is a downloadable program from Nitro, which acts as a PDF document printer. All of these Nitro products are free for individual home use. My Epson all-in-one printer also has its own Web To Page utility for Windows XP, which does a decent job of managing irrelevant HTML and Frames clutter in Web Page printouts. For normally non-capturable data, sometimes Screen Grab works, but not always for protected data.

Another option is to use something like CutePDF[/url] to print the webpage to a PDF file, then print to the local printer.

I do that quite often when I want to save a page and/or print. I find that PDF files produce a ‘cleaner’ print on my printer. It has to do with rendering the fonts.

So, in essence, it’s a two-step process of printing to PDF then printing to the printer.

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Not all Firefoxes are equal. This is why they (and other things) provide “Help / About” to tell you the version.
If you report your version some-one may be able to offer specific advice.

Some time ago I saved a page and all it got was HTML code.

A later version of Firefox got me what I wanted.

Alan

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From my experience with downloads from Banks and the Government Revenue websites, the IE8 setting “Do not save encrypted pages to disk” is very important. Banks want it unticked and the rrevenue want it ticked. I’ve also found it important when attempting to download PDF files – but I can’t remember whether it should be ticked or unticked (sorry). Its worth a try.

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Sorry above post is to the wrong thread. Newbe!

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I have a lot of success with PrintWhatYouLike.com. With this, one can eliminate all the extraneous stuff and literally “print what you like”. You might want to give it a try.

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I use PicPick for situations like this. Works great for me!

***Just remembered something else that I use to copy Snopes articles that are generally not copyable. Download NoScript as an add on to Firefox and enable it. You should then be able to copy and paste into Word or e-mail etc!

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I use PicPick for situations like this. Works great for me!

***Just remembered something else that I use to copy Snopes articles that are generally not copyable. Download NoScript as an add on to Firefox and enable it. You should then be able to copy and paste into Word or e-mail etc!

One thing that works with Snopes is to “view page source”, that you can copy to a word processor and strip out the html relatively easily. :^)

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have we forgot the great —- Nuke Anything Enhanced 1.0.2 —- — firefox extension —
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/951/
here is a cnet review also
http://download.cnet.com/Nuke-Anything-Enhanced/3000-11745_4-10748044.html

I use it quite frequently to remove things before printing

I have a specific issue at fedex with printing a shipper label where i have to remove the disclaimer stuff just so I can print a label.. I reckon it is related to the Print Preview issues for Firefox??
Maybe maybe not fut it solves MY issue and that makes me happy!!!!

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Try using Print Friendly. Its a great tool that I use often and works very well for this type of situation.

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I use http://www.web2pdfconvert.com on a regular basis.

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I often like to put together travel documents: airline flight info, rental car info, limo info, hotel info in a concise format. I also like more control over printing maps and directions. I use printkey which is a print screen utility and powerpoint!!!!! I get a usable chunk of info on the monitor, do a print screen, copy and paste the selection into PP! Then I re-size the snapshot in PP to fit my need. I often overlay directions on a portion of a map that I don’t need be visible. I find there is a lot of useless information on many these travel related web pages and will just use the screen capture to pick up what’s needed, e.g, for a car rental you need the confirmation number, the dates, the cost and no more. For a hotel, the confirmation number, the dates, the cost, the address and phone number, maybe the directions. Obviously, you can use any presentation program that you have instead of PP. While this does not directly address print preview and a web page print, I think it offers an interesting option that in many cases is better than printing the web page. I never ever print a google map any more! It always goes into PP first!

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I use pdfFactory to print most things not pdf-ed on my own system, including web pages. I can aggregate travel info into one file and delete the blank pages. I can print from pdfFactory, or save the entire job to disk.

To further compact what I take along on a trip, I will print from the pdf file to FinePrint2000 [both of those programs are from FinePrint, they are not free, but not at all expensive, and I’ve gotten so much use over the years]. FinePrint2000 can print 2-4 pages on one side, if you can duplex or have a way to print 2-sided by putting through the already-printed first sides, you can save lots of paper as well. You’ll have to experiment to see how many pages you can squeez vs. how much you can read at the smaller page/font size.

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Try using the Aardvark extension with it, you can isolate what you want to print and exclude everything else or delete selected elements on a page. I’ve found it very useful.

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Firefox has ALWAYS had problem with printing; just check the Mozilla forums and bugzilla. The developers don’t seem to care about fixing the problems, or have better things to do with their time. (Bug fixing is not glamorous & most programmers would rather implement new features. Check out some of the excuses people make for the printing problems.) I use IE very rarely, and it is mostly when FF printing gets munged up. Usually, however, I’ll just copy and paste into Word and print from there. IE is also much better at copying tables (e.g., into Excel), although FF add-ins help with this. But it is absurd to have to rely on an extension to fix what should be a core feature of a browser – the ability to accurately print a page. When Chrome gets a real password manager with password security (if ever), I’m leaving FF for good.

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Firefox has ALWAYS had problem with printing; just check the Mozilla forums and bugzilla. The developers don’t seem to care about fixing the problems, or have better things to do with their time. (Bug fixing is not glamorous & most programmers would rather implement new features. Check out some of the excuses people make for the printing problems.) I use IE very rarely, and it is mostly when FF printing gets munged up. Usually, however, I’ll just copy and paste into Word and print from there. IE is also much better at copying tables (e.g., into Excel), although FF add-ins help with this. But it is absurd to have to rely on an extension to fix what should be a core feature of a browser – the ability to accurately print a page. When Chrome gets a real password manager with password security (if ever), I’m leaving FF for good.

Try a password manager. I use Last Pass, which has had very good reviews and works exceptionally well for me. I turn off the browser password features for all 3 browsers you mentioned. I also delete all browser history and cookie caches on all when closing down. With Last Pass you do not need this info saved.

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