Printing page width

[laura]

I badly need some helpful advice. I have done many websites now, but one of
the problems I have is deciding
about the width of the site.

In some cases I have used tables and set the table width to 800 pixels
because I want the site to be fixed and not float around if people stretch
or shrink the browser window. In other cases, I like the site to be 100% of
the screen and yet look good whether the window is maximised or made
smaller. It is often a case of deciding on the design.

However, the problem I am having is that when people try to print a website
which is of a set pixel size, for example 800 pixels. a lot of text and
graphics gets chopped off the right hand side.

Can anyone give me some idea of the best width to use and whether it is
better to fix the width or make it a percentage.

Thanks Laura TD

 

[Murray]

An 8.5 inch wide sheet of paper, with 1" margins gives 6.5" of printing
area. At the screen's 96ppi setting, 6.5" would be 624 pixels. That's how
wide the widest element on your page can be to fit within the margins of
this sheet of paper. You can use fixed width or flexible tables and both
will print properly, provided your page content doesn't exceed this width.

You could also use a print stylesheet to change your page's content width as
an advanced method of controlling the output.

 

[laura]

Thanks for the explanation. It's a shame in a way to restrict the width of a
website to 624 pixels, just so that should anyone want to print it, it will
fit an A4 sheet of paper. Unfortunately I am not too knowledgeable about
stylesheets and therefore do not know what you meant by using a print
stylesheet. I suppose this might be a solution.

Laura TD

 

[Murray]

The website is not really restricted to that width, as long as you make the
page flexible with percent sized (or no size specified) tables. The real
restriction is that you must not have any given content that is wider than
624 pixels. This means a table, or an image. And it would also apply if
you had a 200 pixel table next to a 424 pixel wide table (for example).