Table of Contents

Printing Web Pages on this Website

Table of Contents:

Click any of the following links to go to that bookmark (or heading). You can then return to the top of the page (e.g. by pressing <Alt> + <Left Arrow> or <Ctrl> + <Home>), and select a different section, thus allowing you to use this list as a Table of Contents:

1. General Printing Tips / 1.1 Colour Coded Text and Background Colours and Images / 1.2 Page Margins / 2. All Web Pages on this Site are Printer-friendly (up to a Point) / 2.1 The Sections of a Web Page that One Wouldn’t Want to be Printed Don’t Print / 2.2 Some Text that Prints is Hidden when Viewing a Web Page on Screen / 2.3 Hyperlinks and Urls / 2.4 Serif Fonts when Printing

1. General Printing Tips

1.1 Colour Coded Text and Background Colours and Images

Because much of the text in the complaint is colour coded, it is recommended that one prints the web pages on this site on a colour printer, if possible.

The only background colours and images that print on this website are those that one would want to be printed (see section 2.1 and the table below). It is therefore recommended that you switch on the printing of background colours and images in your browser:

In Internet Explorer, you can do this by going to the Tools + Options menu, and on the Advanced tab, where it says “Printing”, select “Print background colors and images”.
If you are using Firefox or Netscape, go to File + Page Setup and select “Print Background (colors and images)”.
In Opera, go to File + Print Options and select “Print Page Background”.
In Safari for Macintosh, the option to switch on printing of background colours and images is on the Print dialog. Unfortunately, Safari for Windows currently does not appear to support the printing of background colours and images at all.

This will, for instance, allow one to print the highlighting of text with yellow “highlighter”, that is used to indicate the presence of an “inline footnote” throughout this site (see section 2.2 below); the background colours of table cells; the background image of the banner at the top of articles such as this one: in short, important background colours and images that are necessary in order for the print-out to look as it should.

This table,	with its orange background colour,
will not print correctly	unless the printing of background
colours and images	is switched on.

1.2 Page Margins

For best results (and to avoid wasting paper unnecessarily), it is a good idea to set up your page margins for printing web pages on this site as follows:

left and right margins: 0
top margin: 1cm (or 10mm)
bottom margin: 0.5cm (or 5mm).

You can do this in most browsers by going to File + Page Setup (or in Opera, go to File + Print Options).

Safari for Windows is an exception, as although it allows one to change the print margins, doing so results in very poor print quality, for some reason. To be fair, though, it is still in beta.

2. All Web Pages on this Site are Printer-friendly (up to a Point)

All of the web pages on this site are printer-friendly in the normal meaning of the phrase, as discussed in the sections that follow. (You can see how a web page will print without wasting paper by selecting File + Print Preview in your web browser).

To be more precise:

The articles on this site that consist of a single web page are all as printer-friendly as an html page can be. However, by definition, web graphics must be saved at screen resolution and therefore cannot be print-quality; and unlike in a PDF file, one cannot keep related text on a single page when printing a web page – for example, one can’t prevent headings in a web page from being printed on a separate page from the paragraph that follows the heading, or even prevent a two-line heading from being split over two pages.

The articles on this site which consist of multiple web pages (such as the Full Complaint are also printer-friendly in most respects, but because printing multiple individual web pages in order to be able to read a single article would be very inconvenient, PDF versions of all of these articles have also been provided. The PDF version can be accessed by hovering over the PDF icon at the top right of such web pages (or if one has javascript disabled, by clicking on the icon).

Printouts from the PDF files on this site are superior to those from printed web pages in many other respects as well, such as the fact that headings will always be printed on the same page as the paragraph that follows the heading; the paragraph immediately preceding a numbered or bulleted list will always be printed on the same page as the first paragraph in that list, and so on.

The PDF versions of this website’s multi-page articles also have the advantage of containing print-quality graphics; and in addition, even if reading an article on screen, PDF files do have some advantages over html pages in certain circumstances. For more details, see the article Using the PDF Files on this WebsiteUsing the PDF Files on this Website at http://tinyurl.com/686tfg.

2.1 The Sections of a Web Page that One Wouldn’t Want to be Printed Don’t Print

All of the web pages on this site use a print media css file (see http://tinyurl.com/r69y for details of what that means), that hides those parts of the web page that are intended for viewing on screen only. For example, the menu and footer (the simulated “status bar”) do not print; nor does the dark grey backdrop on every page; nor do the simulated “document page” borders; and neither do the icons above each “document page”. As a result, the printed pages look much as they would if each web page were really a Word or PDF document, in that background colours, borders, and images that are part of the real content of the page do print, while the rest do not.

Also, if one has javascript disabled, single-page articles such as this one display a Table of Contents section at the top of the page when viewing them on screen, and multi-page articles display a “Bookmarks on this page” section at the bottom of the page. (If you have javascript enabled, both are accessible if you hover over the “Bookmarks” icon at the top left of the page) – and those sections do not print.

2.2 Some Text that Prints is Hidden when Viewing a Web Page on Screen

The articles on this site contain a large number of pop-up comments that are functionally equivalent to inline footnotes. If one has javascript enabled, these appear when one hovers over text that is highlighted in yellow [Note: This is an example of a pop-up comment serving the function of an inline footnote, which prints, but which is not displayed on screen unless you hover over the highlighted text or have javascript disabled]; whereas if one has javascript disabled, they appear as a green note in text of a reduced point size compared with the surrounding text, and enclosed in square brackets. These “inline footnotes” always print, regardless of whether one has javascript enabled or disabled.

2.3 Hyperlinks and Urls

Many of the hyperlinks on this web-site are cross-references from one page of a multi-page article to another. In those cases, the page number that is being linked to is always displayed (as in “see Comment 17, page 21”); so if viewing a print-out, the hyperlink still makes sense.

In the case of hyperlinks to external sites, the url (or Universal Resource Locator – i.e. the web address) is always displayed, on screen and in the printout; usually in the form of a tinyurl address.

There is a web service based at http://tinyurl.com that allows one to type or paste any long url into a text box and press a button, and it will create a very short “alias” url starting with the prefix http://tinyurl.com/ followed by some letters and numbers; and if one then uses the short url that it creates in place of the long one, one will automatically be redirected to the original, long url.

As well as making our documents much more readable, using shorthand (tinyurl) web addresses in this way also means that if one is reading a hard copy of a document, and needs to type a web address into one’s address bar (as opposed to being able to click on a link when reading on screen) then one will have a much shorter url to type.

2.4 Serif Fonts when Printing

Different fonts are used for the body text in the print-outs from those that are displayed on screen. Because computer screens display text at a much lower resolution than most printed text, the serifs in serif fonts (the tiny horizontal lines at the bottom of each letter, as in this example) are generally thought to reduce readability when reading text on screen; whereas at the much higher resolutions of most modern printers, the serifs are much more clear and take one’s eye across the line as one reads, reducing the effort required. When reading long documents that have been printed at high resolution, it is generally accepted that the use of serif fonts in body text increases readability and reduces eye strain – which is why, for instance, most books and academic papers use serif fonts for body text, whereas many magazines and tabloid newspapers, whose articles tend to be relatively short, use sans serif fonts, which are considered to be prettier.

So the web pages on this site all display sans serif body text on screen, but print serif body text.