Item8615: Printing Foswiki page in Firefox only prints first page and then footer on next

copied from reopened (and reclosed) bug item Item793 from last year

This bug is similar. Very similar.

---

Reopened because the problem reappears in 1.0.9 (at least with Firefox 3.6). To reproduce it, open (for example) http://foswiki.org/Community/FAQ?cover=print (which looks alright) and check your browser's print preview. The problem occurs with Firefox 3.6 (Linux and Windows) in a number of different setups, it does not occur with previous versions of Firefox. Currently, I can't reproduce it with browsers different from Firefox, even though I am pretty sure I have occasionally seen it in Internet Explorer. With PlainSkin, even Firefox 3.6 produces correct printouts, see for example the print preview of http://foswiki.org/Community/FAQ?cover=print;skin=plainskin.

Firefox is generally known to have some printing issues, especially when printing pages with frames and iframes or pages using position:absolute (see, for example, bugreports 539703, 428965 478641 or 3097393 on bugzilla - some of these bugs are still alive in 3.6 and bugzilla has a number of similar reports).

Even if this turns out to be a Firefox bug instead of a Foswiki bug, it might be worth considering to fix PatternSkin in a way that allows Firefox3.6 users to print. More and more Firefox users switch to 3.6 and who knows when Mozilla will fix it.

-- KerstinPuschke - 24 Feb 2010

The behaviour is different from a year ago. If I have a 10 page document, Firefox 3.6 only prints the first page, then the WebBottomBar on the next and stops.

This also happens on an out-of-box PatternSkin. Not just foswiki.org. It means it is impossible to print from foswiki. Printing is totally borked in Firefox.

We need a work around. We have somehow coded the bottom bar so browsers know it is different. This should be removed.

Even if this is Firefox that has made a major cock-up it is Foswiki that looks bad. So we need a workaround.

-- KennethLavrsen - 24 Feb 2010

Following patch to /pub/System/PatternSkin/print.css solved the problem for us:

@@ -131,2 +131,7 @@
    
+.patternPrintPage #patternMain {
+   float:none;
+}
+
+
    /* no left bar */

-- AndreLichtsteiner - 26 Feb 2010

It would be nice to have this fixed on foswiki.org!!!

-- DougClaar - 12 Mar 2010

Thanks Andre!

I have uploaded a new version of Pattern Skin with the fix, and installed it on foswiki.org.

-- ArthurClemens - 12 Mar 2010

Cool, thanks!

-- DougClaar - 13 Mar 2010

It appears that this problem still exists in FoswikiSiteSkin, which doesn't have a print.css file. Is the fix as simple as adding the same patch to style.css near the other patternPrintPage lines?

-- GeorgeClark - 21 Jun 2010

Can't someone using FoswikiSiteSkin confirm this is 10 minutes?

-- KennethLavrsen - 18 Jul 2010

I reopened this based upon some IRC discussions: http://irclogs.foswiki.org/bin/irclogger_log/foswiki?date=2010-06-21,Mon&sel=449#l445

I just tried printing from Firefox on Linux for this bug report and got 3 pages. So not sure what is going on. In any event, since PatternSkin was fixed, I probably should not have reopened this.

-- GeorgeClark - 19 Jul 2010

Well. It is for sure not a PatternSKin thing anymore.

So I change this to Normal and to FoswikiSiteSkin

-- KennethLavrsen - 20 Jul 2010

Please specify which pages go wrong on which browsers/OS. As I don't see a problem on Mac Firefox. Firefox on Windows perhaps?

-- ArthurClemens - 30 Jul 2010

This came from an IRC discussion, as mentioned above, and it was one of the foswiki_irc accounts, so I don't see how we can track it back. If nobody can recreate this, I'm changing back to waiting for release, and back to PatternSkin since that was the original issue

-- GeorgeClark - 31 Jul 2010

I think the problem is the style attribute is missing media="print" so it only works if you are printing from the Printable screen.

Changing the media to print fixed it for us.

-- AndrewJones - 17 Aug 2010

We found out, it is .foswikiTopic {overflow:hidden;} which is causing Firefox to print only the first Page. Looks like Firefox is interperting a Pagebreak inside this Container as an "Overflow". We've set .foswikiTopic {overflow:visible} in the print.css and now it is working fine.

-- OliverSchaub - 18 Aug 2010

OliverSchaub, did you need your fix as well as the float:none; fix from above, or instead of?

-- AndrewJones - 18 Aug 2010

@AndrewJones: Both. overflow:hidden is a general Firefox "Problem" (or is it a Feature?) and not limited to Foswiki. Any container with "overflow:hidden" on any Page will be "cut" at the Pagebreak by Firefox.

-- OliverSchaub - 19 Aug 2010

Thanks Oliver, have applied your fix.

-- AndrewJones - 19 Aug 2010

Hi, I see this task is closed but I do have exactly this problem. If I try to print from firefox. As you say with the Internet Explorer it does print correctly.

* foswiki 1.0.9-1 (debian repo version) * firefox 3.6.13 * OS client: win7 64 bit * OS foswiki server: debian lenny

I had a look into $FOSWIKI/pub/System/PatternSkin/print.css and I have: grep overflow print.css overflow:visible; /* make sure that overflowing content is visible */ overflow:visible important; overflow:visible; /* make sure that overflowing content is visible */ overflow:visible important;

grep float print.css float:none; float:right; float:none; float:right;

Is the float:right the problem? Should I change it everywhere into float:none; ? Is it really fixed in the >= 1.0.10 which is not jet on the debian repo? Can you help?

-- CatiaLavalle - 17 Dec 2010

Hi Catia, often we lose updates on closed bugs. Technically we shouldn't re-open bugs that have had fixes incorporated into released versions, but that would be a better way to get some attention on this task. More appropriate would be a Support question or an E-mail to foswiki-discuss, or hang around on IRC.

In summary, please upgrade to the current version of PatternSkin. Personally I have done this successfully from a debian installed 1.0.9, despite the warnings telling me not to

-- PaulHarvey - 18 Dec 2010

Hi, mmm I not brave enough to ignore warnings :-). Anyway I have edited the $FOSWIKI/pub/System/PatternSkin/print.css and changed all the float:right; into float:none; And it looks like it is working properly now. I hope for the future that the fix comes spontaniously with the dabian foswiki udates.

-- CatiaLavalle - 20 Dec 2010

Commenting is disabled while not logged in