how do I format the print version of a web page output

[hoffie4]

I am building a knowledgebase project that has many topics (web pages) with steps for fixing certain issues. I have also built a TOC and a page layout to brand and format the printed version of the topics, so that when I build my print output I have PDFs that look nice.

My problem is that when I build my HTML5 Top Nav target and go to a web page, there is a Print button next to Expand All and across from the bread-crumbs. When I click Print to print a topic page, the Print styles are applied but the page layout is not what I specified to be the printed page layout (so it doesn't look like it does when I generate a print target). I have tried changing the Page Layout of the master page to be my custom page layout, but that doesn't do anything.

How do I define what the printed version of my web pages look like? I know that I could generate a printed PDF output from each topic/web-page and then hyperlink them on the pages, but that becomes a lot of work and I would have to maintain the links and the PDFs as they get updated over time. Is there a way to set the appearance of a web output topic when it is being printed?

Also, the content that I have set as print-only does not show when I click the Print button on the web-page. Is that styling only applied to the output? Can it be stored as a part of the topic web page so that when the web page is printed that content is shown? What I have is an introduction and purpose at the beginning of documents that is set only to show for print. I would very much like to be able to have that shown as part of the page when it is printed.

[mdgates]

Is it common for your users to generate a paper version a Help topic? Since you're already providing a PDF version, wouldn't that suffice? If they want to, couldn't they just print pages from the PDFs? Just wondering if this is an issue worth spending your time solving.

[willdawq01]

The problem is that the print button just does the same thing as file-->print, which is a function of the browser and Flare has no influence over that process.

I had to fight this one for a while myself and never came up with a super simple solution. In the end I got rid of the print button on the skin and provided a link in the topic with a hyperlinked image to the PDF on the server. The way we have it setup we have to upload the PDF separately (ain't legacy fun?), but it may be able to keep the PDF in the Flare project so that it uploads alongside the HTML whenever you publish, after building the PDF on its own probably.

There may be a way with javascript to create a new 'Print' button that is contextually aware of what topic is being displayed and link to the corresponding PDF, but you would still have to upload the PDF as above.

I did ask about on-the-fly PDF creation at MadWorld 2015, but it is beyond Flare's ability since it would have to be done with server-side code. At least this was the conclusion then.

[devjoe]

There are two different aspects here: printing from the web page and creating a PDF. Both use the same CSS styles from the print medium (unless you specify a different medium for your PDF), but the print layout is a thing that only exists inside the Flare project, and is only used when building your PDF. The web browser knows nothing about that layout. I don't know what you have in your print layout, but you may be able to create some of it with CSS styles. (This, by the way, is part of the reason you might use a different medium for your PDF and printed web pages. There are also quirks to the way browsers print web pages that might lead you to do some things differently.) You likely can't get it all, though, and so you might either want to provide your users with links to a PDF version of the content for printing, or just design a simpler version of your print layout for printing from the help, using the features that do work.