asked on

browser print dialog i need the return values ie page range selected

I have a simple asp.net page with some text and images, several pages long. When the user clicks the print button (window.print()) or some similar script for printing the standard system print dialog box appears, they choose the printer name , and page range (ie pages 3-5)

how can my code get back the page range they chose to print to their printer?
compatible first with IE 8 / Windows.

thanks
josh

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

dxdinh

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

joshmiller

ASKER

I thought so, what about accessing Adobe Flash player action scripts to use the print dialog in there? would that have possibilities to get information back?

dxdinh

I guess you can do that by ask the user the page range first and build frame to include with those pages ....

joshmiller

ASKER

my current solution does that, but then the user still has to see a print dialog after the needed pages are shown, in order to choose a possible printer name, and that second dialog still has a page-range selection, so two prompts to obtain information which is really in one prompt, that is what im trying to figure a way around

dxdinh

I guess - it's a little disadvantage - but either you have to build activeX control as I mention, or java applet control

Badotz

Why do you need to know this?

joshmiller

ASKER

in this situation the user pays a fee per page that they choose to print, they often only need to print a certain range.

Badotz

hmmm...short of you printing the pages, say, to a file, and then serving them to the client, I'm not sure there is a foolproof way to do this.

joshmiller

ASKER

sounds like activex is going have to be it. thanks

dxdinh

I would consider java applet since you can reach more browsers vs activeX

joshmiller

ASKER

turns out, you can figure out what the user selected for page range, by how many times the _PrintPage Event fires. So even if you set e.HasMorePages = True on the first time the event fires, it will not come around again if they user only chose to print the first page. This is vastly different than standard .NET framework printing dialogs which will print 100 pages even if the user only chose 1 page because the _printpage event can cycle as much as the code allows for. The standard framework dialog and printDocument features allow you to see what page range the user wants and then completely ignore it. In Silverlight your _PrintPage event will fire however many times the user chose pages for and the code cannot interfere.

joshmiller

ASKER

that last post was quite confusing, here is an example...

user clicks print
user choose 1-2 in silverlight print dialog
_PrintPage event will fire a maximum of two times even if e.HasMorePages = True after second page
_PrintPage event will fire exactly once e.HasMorePages = False on the first page event by code
so code can shorten the pages to less than what the user asks for, but it cannot go extra pages beyond what the user asks for. sometimes e.HasMorePages affects printing, sometimes it is ignored, depending on how it relates to the user range.
This is true for System.Windows.Printing
but different than System.Drawing.Printing

joshmiller

ASKER

I found EndPrint to be usefull for the PrintedPageCount property:

if you have a 7 page document
user prints, and selected page range 6-7
YourPrintDocObject.PrintPage event will fire 7 times
only 2 pages will come out of the users printer
during EndPrint event YourPrintDocObject.PrintedPageCount = 2

how do you know if they chose 5-6 or 6-7? I don’t know the answer to that.

I’m still experimenting with this, please let me know if this is inaccurate.