347417 - [UX][mac] Implement print preview feature for firefox (similar to IE feature)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 133787

(Core :: Print Preview, enhancement)

Description

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

I received this email from a user who did not want to create a bugzilla account, filing it for him (Michael Ewing):

I am a mac user who is using firefox for web browsing. Your software does not include a feature called "print preview" which appears under the "file" menu in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 for Mac. This feature is extremely useful when wanting to print out pages on the internet. It allows you to format and view on screen that which you are printing so you can get the page to look exactly like you want it to be before printing to paper. I highly recommend you examine this feature on Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 for Mac and consider developing a similar feature for Firefox. I heard through the grapevine that Microsoft will not be writing any new browsers for Mac beyond version 5.2 and that means that this highly useful feature "print preview" will no longer be available anywhere.

Comment 1

[Mark Mentovai]

The "Print Preview" menu item was intentionally removed on the Mac because Macs already have a built-in print preview function that shows exactly how something will look on a printed page.  It's available at File:Print, click Preview in the Print dialog.  Access to the Mozilla print preview viewer was initially removed in bug 228000.  This bug is probably WONTFIX.  I would feel differently if the Mozilla previewer did something important or interesting that the native preview didn't.  If that ever happens, this would be worth revisiting.

Comment 2

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Another email from Michael:

Furthermore the mac "print" and preview" option do not allow for "portrait" or "landscape" page orientation nor does it offer size change via % larger or smaller. It is much less functional than the "print preview" offered in Microsoft Exlorer 5.2 for Mac.

Comment 3

[Mark Mentovai]

Portrait and landscape of course come out of the Page Setup dialog, but it's true that you can't change them on the fly in Preview.  We don't expose UI for the %-scale anywhere in the Print dialog, but we probably should put it into the PDE in place of "Shrink To Fit Page Width".  (And I just realized: does the PDE get localized?  Uh-oh.)  If we did have UI for it, then the preview would of course respect it.  Again, it wouldn't be something you could change in the fly during a preview, which is where the win/lin preview implementation has it beat.

I'm Ccing other interested people, and people involved with the original decision in bug 228000.

Comment 4

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

From Michael: I phoned Apple tech support in an attempt to gain further insight to "print preview". Neither the tech support fellow or I together could figure how to make this mac feature work. The giant big difference is that Microsoft Explorer 5.2 "print preview" allows you to see on-the-screen exactly what ends up printing out on the paper. The Apple tool seems to be unable to do this, or much of anything. In fact it seem to not function at all.

Furthermore the mac "print" and "preview" options do not allow for "portrait" or "landscape" page orientation nor does it offer size change via % larger or smaller, while showing those changes on screen. It is much less functional than the "print preview" offered in Microsoft Exlorer 5.2 for Mac. 

Comment 5

[Ken Winiecki, Jr.]

I vote for this bug.  As someone who recently switched from Windows to Mac, I find Apple Preview to be an unreasonably inefficient substitute for Print Preview, due to the lack of on-the-fly scale adjustment.  It has been my habit for years to adjust scaling to fit web content onto as few sheets of paper as I could read.  On Windows Firefox this can be done in 1 window on 1 application, but on Mac Firefox it requires 3 windows on 2 applications.  Thus the Mac user's only choices are between wasting more paper and effort flipping back and forth through more pages of hardcopy, and wasting more time and effort flipping back and forth through more windows and applications.  As software's reason for existing is to make users' lives easier, this feature of Mac Firefox qualifies as a failure, something I traditionally expect to see more on the Microsoft platform.

Comment 6

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

This was removed in bug 129398.

Comment 7

[Jonathan Watt [:jwatt]]

Looks like there may be the beginnings of a patch is bug 1335664.

Comment 9

[Scott]

So where are we with this issue? There seems to be three of them very similar: 219412, 347417, and 133787. These have all been open for over 15 years!

From my understanding Firefox used to have a built in print preview function on Mac's but then removed it since OSX added their own. However macOS no longer has a built in print preview (except for Apple's own apps) so wouldn't it make sense for Firefox to re-enable their own print preview function again?

I have tried tons of "print preview" add-ons for Firefox and they all seem to be built off the same framework which doesn't work all the time. Before printing I always invoke the preview to I can ensure text/page elements all fit on the page correctly and often times it's best to shrink the scaling % to fit better. For example, that one line that always seems to get put on page two, but changing to 90% and then everything fits on page just fine. Even when I get the preview looking right and hit print, I'm then presented with different options (auto shrink page width, print background images, paper orientation, etc) and these settings seem to be a gamble since they never seem to match what I just saw in the preview. One common problem I have is looking at the preview which is in portrait, but when actually printing it comes out in landscape. Or trying to match up the scaling % in both places. It's kind of like having two volume controls on a Bluetooth speaker....do you set one to 100% and then adjust as necessary with the other, or mix the two controls until you get what you want? What's worse is you'll never know until you actually print it out to see if it worked. Most of the time this leads me to printing 5 or 6 times or exporting as a PDF and THEN printing just to get it to come out right.

Rather then having this headache any longer, why not build in a print preview into Firefox so that the printing process is one step like it is in other browsers? I click print, I get a preview window, adjust if needed and then confirm the print and be done. This is lot more straightforward then having to use a 3rd party preview system that frequently does not match Firefox's print settings which results in incorrect print jobs and wasted ink and paper.