When Written: Nov 2006
In a previous issue I wrote about the problems with the VAT on-line web application and the issue involved it getting it to print correctly, very important for something like a VAT return. John Pym who is a regular PcPro reader emailed me with a transcript of an email conversation about the same problem he had with the web site 18 months ago. After the usual automated emails of the form ‘Thank you for your email we value your thoughts….etc’ . These are usually followed by the user sending a more frustrated email until a human replies. This time they did eventually reply with a suggestion to help with the printing issue, they said:
“I need to correct my previous mistake and advise you that it is possible to print the eVAT Return on to one page, by using the procedure contained in our online ‘eVAT: Frequently Asked Questions’:
1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Click on the ‘View’ menu.
3. Highlight the ‘Text size’ menu and then select ‘Smallest’.
4. Print the eVAT Ackowledgement webpage.
5. Adjust your settings again to a suitable viewing level.
We do acknowledge that this is not an adequate solution, and our
Technical department are aware of the problem, but we are unable to provide a release date.”
Wouldn’t it be better if they added the following line to the top of the web page ?
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”OtherStyleSheet.css” media=”print”/>
This would then tell the browser to use a different style sheet if outputting to a printer and this style sheet can set the visible property to false on all the elements that are not needed on a print out like the menu bars and also set the font to a size that does print.
Article by: Mark Newton
Published in: Mark Newton