When the print out doesn’t fit on the page

Jan 23, 2018

Sometimes when printing information from Sobs the page is wider than the paper.  There are a few options to consider when dealing with this problem.

Why is printing a problem?

Sobs is a web application – all of the information we send you is actually sent to your web browser.  You might be using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome or any one of a number of different web browser programs.  For Sobs to display information in a web browser we have to send it using a format called HTML.  This is useful for us because it means we can send standard HTML code to any web browser and the web browser you are using will format and display this on your screen.

Now HTML allows us to control a number of aspects of the display but it doesn’t allow us much control over how a page should be printed.  When you want to print a page it is actually the web browser that controls how the page will be formatted for your printer, where the page breaks will be placed, and even what is displayed in the headers and footers.   The overall width of the page is also decided by the web browser, not the HTML.

In general we do try and make the page as printer-friendly as possible, but the nature of HTML is to expand the width and height as necessary to include the detail on the page.  In some instances we can limit the size of areas in the HTML document, however this would simply end up cutting off information from the display which may be important – we’ve chosen not to do this.

Printing options you can control

  1. If the page width is the problem, then a simple option is to print the page in landscape format.  This is an option on your web browser, perhaps a print option or page setup menu (it depends upon the web browser you are using).  This will provide for a wider display area when printing.
  2. The actual display size of a web page can be adjusted by the web browser – the web browsers do this for accessibility (eg where the user may be visually impaired and need to adjust the size of the text).  If you find the displayed page is probably larger than it needs to be then you may use this option to shrink the page in order to display more information on your screen.  You should only do this while you can still comfortably read the text on the screen.
    Use the Control+ and Control- keys to increase and decrease the display size.  (ie Hold down the Ctrl key and then press the “+” key to increase the size or the “-” key to decrease the size).

 

Printing from the Room and Resource Booking application

The actual page content can also effect the size of the printed page.   With the Room and Resource Booking application we have a standard calendar layout, and this generally works well where the room names and staff short codes are all a reasonable length.  Sometimes a school will create a resource and give it a long title, and this will cause display problems with the width of the booking details.

When looking at the calendar take a note of the resource names or staff short codes that may be making the display wider than necessary.  As the Sobs administrator you can go into the Resource management area and adjust the resource titles so that they are more efficient.  A good resource name is one that the staff readily understand and recognise.  Similarly you can adjust staff short codes in the staff management area if they are too long.  These changes will not affect any booking data.