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Print Safari pages as seen on-screen [10.2] Web Browsers
I find the main problem with print formatting in Safari (at least in 10.2 -- I've not had the opportunity to try this in Panther) is that Safari treats printers as having low resolution compared to the display screen. This appears to be fixed at around 27 dots/cm (70dpi), at least for my printer. So for the standard A4 paper, the effective width (working in cm) is (20.99 - 2x0.63 [margins]) x 27 = 532 dots. This is half the usual screen width for a typical web page, hence the problem (try displaying the average web page you want to print in a window shrunk to 532 pixels wide!). The solution, in a nutshell, is to scale the paper up for Safari, and then scale it down again for printing by using the standard print Preview facility.

So, lets say you want to print web pages as they appear on the screen when displayed at 1024 pixel width. To set this up the first time you do it, you need to create a custom paper size with width 1024/27 = 38cm, say 40cm allowing for 1cm margins. You want to keep the same shape as your actual paper, so for A4 paper you want to use a length of 40*1.4 = 56cm. From within Safari, go into Page Setup, and select Custom Paper Size from the Settings drop down menu. Hit New to create a new paper, call it Safari1024, and specify height 56cm, width 40cm, and all margins 1cm. Click Save to store this, and then OK to exit page setup. Go back into Page Setup again, and set the Paper Size as Safari1024 (which should now be at the bottom of the Paper Size drop down list). This setting should remain in place for Safari until you change it.

Whenever you want to print a page, go into Print in the normal way, but click Preview rather than printing directly. Preview should show the page formatted as if displayed in a 1024 pixel wide window. Now from within Preview, check that the Page Setup is set to the actual paper size in your printer (A4 in this example), and then still within preview select Print and this time click the Print button to do the actual printing. Preview will automatically shrink each page down to the size of the paper selected.

Even better, if you use Acrobat Reader as your Preview application (set Acrobat Reader as the default application for .pdf files), then while you're previewing a page, you can use the Graphic Select feature to choose any rectangular area within the page to print instead of the entire thing. So you can miss out all those annoying adverts and side panels on the printout.

You can, of course, set up alternative paper sizes for printing pages at pixel widths other than 1024 -- you just need to remember to select the paper you want in the Safari Page Setup before you print. Note that the larger the pixel width you squeeze onto the paper, the smaller the text size on the printout.

[robg adds: I believe this is fixed in the newer Safari in 10.3; at least, I haven't had any issues with output size when printing to a Brother Laser from Safari.]
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Print Safari pages as seen on-screen [10.2] | 5 comments | Create New Account
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Print Safari pages as seen on-screen [10.2]
Authored by: rkleim on Mar 26, '04 12:10:00PM

I think it's a lot easier to create a custom paper like it says, call it safari66. Make the paper width 12.7 inches, left and right margins 0.33, and leave the height 11 and top and bottom margins 0.25 (for 8.5 X 11). Then save. Open page setup again, choose this as your paper, and ckeck to print at 66%. Now you will see exactly what you want. I need this on my canon s750. Works like a charm.



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Print Safari pages as seen on-screen [10.2]
Authored by: rkleim on Mar 26, '04 12:11:51PM

I should have mentioned that you can then print directly from safari without the mess of using preview...



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Print Safari pages as seen on-screen [10.2]
Authored by: pecosbill on Mar 26, '04 05:36:23PM

I cannot get any custom paper selections to stick. Talked to Apple and they said it was fixed in Panther (and is I think). Therefore, neither tip works, sadly. I've experienced this problem on my work mac and my iBook at home under Jaguar.

---
Pecos Bill



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Print Safari pages as seen on-screen [10.2]
Authored by: rkleim on Mar 27, '04 03:38:34PM

Are you sure you are doing it right? It's kind of confusing.

1. open page setup. Choose settings/custom paper size. Click on new. Set up the margins and paper size, set the name, and make sure you choose to SAVE. Then exit from page setup.

2. Select page setup again. This time, select paper size, and you should see your new size listed. Choose it and say OK.

3. Now choose to print. Safari should remember your page setup, but check when restarting to be sure.



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Print Safari pages as seen on-screen [10.2]
Authored by: aamann on Mar 27, '04 06:50:13PM

To change default printer settings (page sizes, print quality, whatnot, ...) open your browser and go to

localhost:631

This will open the CUPS printer setup control panel for you which allows you to configure about anything for all your printers



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