Mozilla Connect

SandySurfRock · ‎05-30-2022

I absolutely, positively abhor the lack of a print preview. I'm sick and tired of wasting paper on crap that's at the very bottom of the page. I will now go back to Safari for printing. Even my iPhone allows me to preview pages before printing and Mozilla doesn't.

jscher2000 · ‎05-30-2022

Do you mean on your Mac or on your iPhone?

Firefox 85+ for Mac (like Windows and Linux) shows a print preview by default, so it would be strange if you don't see it there.

PermitTheFrog · ‎06-30-2022

PC, Windows 10, Firefox and Opera uses the same interface.

I just set-up to print 24 of 48 pages. 2 pages on 1 and printing on both sides. And I have to throw the 6 pages in the trash because the preview is useless. The preview shows me the pages that are ready to being printed BUT it does not show the orientation.

Another issue is that the printing dialog renders the complete document before I can watch the preview. But when the preview is useless why even render it.

SandySurfRock is right.

jscher2000 · ‎06-30-2022

@PermitTheFrog wrote:
I just set-up to print 24 of 48 pages. 2 pages on 1 and printing on both sides. And I have to throw the 6 pages in the trash because the preview is useless. The preview shows me the pages that are ready to being printed BUT it does not show the orientation.

I am aware of one scenario where Firefox does not show the orientation selector: when the web page uses @page size rules which control the orientation by locking in a particular page size and orientation. To override that, you can make this change:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. Please keep in mind that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste layout.css.page-size.enabled and pause while the list is filtered

(C) Double-click the preference to switch the value from true (apply @page size rules) to false (ignore those rules)

Does that work on the page you were trying to print?

Another issue is that the printing dialog renders the complete document before I can watch the preview. But when the preview is useless why even render it.

Do you find yourself regularly clicking the "Print using system dialog..." link? If you like, you could experiment with disabling the preview and skipping right to the system dialog. Here's how:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. Please keep in mind that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste print.prefer_system_dialog and pause while the list is filtered

(C) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false (use the combined preview/setup overlay) to true (skip the overlay)

But if you have suggestions for improving the preview, what are your suggestions?

CarolC · ‎07-14-2022

I haven't had problems until today, when I open an email so that I can print it Firefox is only seeing/allowing ONE PAGE. How can I get more than just page one?

jscher2000 · ‎07-14-2022

@CarolC wrote:
I haven't had problems until today, when I open an email so that I can print it Firefox is only seeing/allowing ONE PAGE. How can I get more than just page one?

Which email site is it? (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) There are some bugs on file for Yahoo and Gmail related to nested table elements and style rules (display: table) that causes Firefox to print incorrectly.

More generally, some messages and web pages have a layout that Firefox doesn't split across pages so the content just runs off the bottom. In some cases, there are gaps in the content. There are many reasons for the problem which makes this tricky to work around. The one mentioned above (display: table) is difficult to fix by hand, but maybe someone has developed a trick for it.

I wish I had better news, but it's important to keep providing examples to the developers so they can try to fix all the variants of this problem.

StefanG · ‎12-06-2022

Hello,

I am not willing to read so many threads about the Firefox Printing problems. I just realise that I am not the only person having huge problems to print with Firefox. I just tried to print a Groupon voucher with Firefox, Opera and Edge. It is just impossible to print the voucher correctly with Firefox while it is only a right-click away with Opera and Edge. I already tried to follow the help instructions, but nothing helps. The printing function is just crap and - like others - I might also move to other browsers for my daily work.

jscher2000 · ‎12-06-2022

@StefanG wrote:
I just tried to print a Groupon voucher with Firefox, Opera and Edge. It is just impossible to print the voucher correctly with Firefox while it is only a right-click away with Opera and Edge.

Is the voucher a web page or a PDF? If it's a PDF, I suggest printing from a dedicated PDF program for best fidelity. If it's a web page, it could be one of the known bugs or a new bug, but it's hard to test without a Groupon voucher...

StefanG · ‎12-30-2022

Hello jscher2000,

It is unfortunately not a PDF but a web page. When I click "display voucher" a new browser window opens and it shows me the voucher in a reasonable way (see attachment). However, when I want to print this, Firefox produces 10 pages to print!

It appears to me, as if certain signs in the text are interpreted as page breaks.

jscher2000 · ‎12-31-2022

@StefanG wrote:
When I click "display voucher" a new browser window opens and it shows me the voucher in a reasonable way (see attachment). However, when I want to print this, Firefox produces 10 pages to print!
It appears to me, as if certain signs in the text are interpreted as page breaks.

I just remembered I have an unused Groupon from 2018 and when I call up print preview, the instructions section of the voucher splits over many pages. That's definitely not helpful.

When I use the Inspector (right-click the first instruction > Inspect) to see what is going on there, it turns out that there is a style rule specifying a page break after each <br> element. Why??!!

In the Inspector, if you hover over a style rule, a checkbox will appear to the left of it and you can uncheck the box to turn it off. That helps the page print correctly. But I don't know why this rule is in there and/or why it would be ignored in other browsers. Bizarre.

CarolC · ‎07-14-2022

Thanks jscher2000 - it was outlook.office.com/mail.

Print using system dialog does still come up as a choice for me, so at least I do have an option.