A Javascript for printing

[peschoen]

I am designing a help system that has quick reference guides that are meant to be printed. They have relatively small screenshots, and the problem I had was clarity in the print. Here was my solution: most of the bitmap formats give an adequately clear screen image even when shrunk, but they print terrible. .png format looks awful on the screen when downsampled, but prints great.

Here is what I am asking: while the user is looking at say a screen with .gif images, is there a javascript that will allow the user to print the file with the .png images? And where should the page with the .png images be kept in the help system?
Thanks

[Peter Grainge]

Bitmaps are not the norm for HTML and whilst png works for some, I also see plenty of problems with that format. Personally I will not use it.

You should be able to get the same graphic to be good on screen and in print. See the topic on my site about images. Click here.

[Guest]

In addition to Peter's suggestions, you could take your screen shots another route. The topic below describes an approach called screen portraits.

The advantage of this is that the resulting images are alot more scalable, (as well as needing significantly less maintenance if the software changes).

http://techwritetips.wordpress.com/2006/02/21/best-practice-screen-shots-vs-screen-portraits/

http://techwritetips.wordpress.com/2006/02/21/best-practice-screen-shots-vs-screen-portraits/

Hope that helps.

[Guest]

Another option is to uss a .css with print and screen media definitions.