345211 - Print to File Confusing to Use

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Dylan Martin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060614 Fedora/1.5.0.4-1.2.fc5 Firefox/1.5.0.4 pango-text
Build Identifier: Firefox 1.5 ???  (Sorry, I'm no a different system right now)

If you print, and check the "print to file" box, what happens next is very confusing.  I think of the problem as having three parts, so I'll list them.

1) The "print to file" dialoge doesn't ask you where you want to save the file.
In my case it saved it to c:/program files/mozilla firefox/, which was really confusing.  It should give a dialoge which lets me choose a destination folder, and the default should be something nomal, like My Documents.

2) The file produced by "print to file" has no extension.  Apparently it should be a .prn file if it's in a propriatary printer format, or .ps if it's in postscript.

3) Prn files are difficult to use.  I know, this is Windows fault, but I figure I might as well list it too.  On one side you could offer a little documentation on how to use a .prn file, on a more useful side, you could offer to "print to file" to a .pdf instead.  That would make "print to file" a lot more useful to people who don't have printers.  


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get on Firefox on Windows
2. Open a web page
3. Go to File -> Print
4. Check the "print to file" box
5. Print
6. Try to find & use the resulting file

Actual Results:  
File is difficult to find, difficult to figure out what format it is, and difficult to actually use even if the format is known.

Expected Results:  
File should be easy to use, even if you don't have a printer.

You guys rule!  Thanks for taking the time to make this thing!

Comment 1

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Reporter, do you still see this problem with the latest Firefox 2? If not, can you please close this bug as WORKSFORME. Thanks!

Comment 2

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

-> Closing as works for me because of missing feedback if this is still reproducible in the latest release (Firefox 2.0.0.4) or Trunk Build.

Also works for me for step1 on comment #0 with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9a6pre) Gecko/20070626 Minefield/3.0a6pre ID:2007062604