1249846 - Provide a way to zoom the page (not just its content) in Print Preview

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 129025

(Core :: Print Preview, enhancement)

Description

[Nick Levinson]

In Print Preview, users can enlarge/shrink content on a page but cannot enlarge the page in the viewport or window using Preview or Setup, so we can look more closely at how details will print (or shrink it if we want to see a page at its full height without scrolling for design perception). Some other applications offer menus with Page Width, Full Page, 100%, etc.

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

What OS are you using?

Firefox's Print Preview does already have a "Shrink to fit" option (the default) along with customizable percent zoom-values, and it shows you a preview of how that looks -- is that what you're asking for?   (Note that this isn't available on Mac -- we use the native "Preview" application there for print-preview, which I think means we basically print to PDF and show you the PDF as a preview.)

If you could clarify a bit more about what you're looking for & how it differs from what is currently offered in Firefox, that would be helpful. Thanks!

> Some other applications offer menus with Page Width, Full Page, 100%, etc

(I'm not clear on what those first two options -- "Page Width" & "Full Page" -- would mean for web content, since web content generally can scale to fit whatever viewport you give it. To the extent that those labels mean anything, I'd expect that the "Shrink to Fit" option might do what you want -- I believe that lays stuff out at a normal (100%) scale, and then if there's anything that runs off the page (e.g. due to a hardcoded wide element), then we shrink everything to make that element fit.)

Comment 2

[Nick Levinson]

Linux (OpenSuse 13.2 in evergreen mode). That means I'm now using FF 44.0.2.

The Scale menu applies to the content on the page. It does not apply to the page itself. In other words, for example, an 8.5"x11" letter-size page displays on my screen as about 8" wide regardless of how the Scale menu is set. If I want to examine a detail closely, I use a hand-held magnifier, because Firefox does not offer me a way for doing so. My viewport for this purpose is about 12" wide, so a Page Width option would show the 8.5"-wide page as if about 12" wide, with the fonts roughly a third larger than they will be on the actual printouts. On the other hand, a Full Page option would show the 11"-high page as only about 6" high, my laptop's browser's viewport being only about 6" high, producing fonts only about half the size of what the printout will show. Meanwhile, your computer likely has different viewport dimensions, so Page Width or Full Height would produce a different width or height.

SeaMonkey 2.40 seems to have the same user interface for Print Preview, suggesting that perhaps the same code base is in use. It has the same characteristics as described above for Firefox.

But Konqueror 4.14.8 has the opposite option set. If you  open a Web page and go to Print Preview, there's a menu with percentages. The menu does not adjust the content on the page, which, unless there's very little content, would change the page count in the menubar. Instead, the menu changes the size of the sheet in the viewport, keeping the page count constant. To the right of the menu are two icons of magnifying glasses, one with a minus sign and the other with a plus sign. Those icons essentially do the same thing the menu does. To the left of the menu are two other icons. One is a rectangle with a left-right arrow. That seems to represent a sheet of paper and width, the tooltip says "[f]it width", and clicking it previews the page enlarged to the viewport width. The other is a rectangle with arrows pointing to the corners. That seems to represent a sheet of paper with all corners to be visible, the tooltip says "[f]it page", and clicking it previews the page shrunk to show the entire page.

We need both feature sets. What Firefox does now, adjust a Web page's content to fit more or fewer printout pages, should stay available. But, also, what Konqueror does, which is to preview a page as it will be printed with a small preview, a large preview, or an in-between preview but without changing the number of printout pages, should be added to Firefox.

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Thanks for clarifying -- that feature-request makes sense.  I'll bump this from UNCONFIRMED to NEW.

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Note that Ctrl+ScrollWheel kind of works (in print preview) to enlarge the page, but it works inconsistently and sometimes zooms in on the gray backdrop instead of the page. It feels pretty broken -- I'm filing a separate bug on that brokenness: bug 1252521.

Mentioning it here because that might be a workaround for this bug, though (or it might ultimately be the method that we use to address this bug).

Comment 5

[Nick Levinson]

Thanks. My laptop uses a touchpad, so the functionality of a scrollwheel needs an alternative input method. I could plug a mouse into a USB port but I haven't and it wouldn't be convenient to use when I'm working in my lap.