Over the past week and a half, I’ve been cleaning up some technical problems on this Web site. One problem in particular has been bugging me:– I wanted to make it easy to print entries from this blog, because every once in a while I want to share something I write here with someone who doesn’t have computer access. In a sense, this represents a problem in accessibility.

The blogging software I use, WordPress, comes with a default setting that strips away all formatting when you try to print from a Web browser. So I wrote a new stylesheet specifically for printing. Which should have been an easy task.

But it wasn’t, and it took me a couple of hours to debug the new stylesheet. You see, most Web browsers do not comply with the CSS2 specification — which means that if you try to print a page from this blog from Internet Explorer, say, or Safari, things won’t work quite right. Most importantly, printing from Explorer or Safari will mean that when there’s a link in the text, all that will print is the text you see on the screen. But if you print from CSS2-compliant browser like Firefox, the address of the link will also print out. (I have made the rest of the site printer-friendly, too — with the same caveat.)

Two conclusions: (1) Everyone should use Firefox as their primary Web browser (besides, it’s free). (2) Until we see better compliance with basic Web standards, creating Web sites will continue to be overly time-consuming — which creates problems for small non-profit groups and small congregations.

Do-It-Yourself:
Printing with CSS — general principles, from “A List Apart”
CSS styles for print in WordPress