asked on

Print page without opening it.

IS there a way to print a webpage without opening it? Lets say I'm on a page: www.MYSITE.com/report.php and that page is very stylized (CSS) and I have an option on that page to "Print Page" BUT, I have another version of that page; www.MYSITE.com/report_print_version.php and this page has been formatted to print out.

I DON'T want to open this page, I want to print it from www.MYSITE.com/report.php.

Is that possible? Any clues?

Dave Baldwin

The only file that I know of that you can print without 'opening' it is a plain text file going to a plain text printer (which you probably haven't seen in 10 years anyway). Everything else, HTML, PDF, 'doc', 'xls' must be opened by the program that can format it properly. In the case of PHP, you can't even generate the page without opening it in PHP. Until you open it and run the PHP, the 'printable' version doesn't even exist.

Robert Granlund

ASKER

@Dave

I'm using a JQuery Plugin and the following:

        <script>
            $(document).ready(function() {
                $('span.print').printPage();
            });
        </script>

<span class="print">PRINT</span>

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Is there a way to print a containing DIV instead of the entire page?

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Big Monty

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Dave Baldwin

Is there a way to print a containing DIV instead of the entire page?

There might be but that's not your original question. And in the case of the DIV, it still has to be on the page in the browser to print it with the correct formatting.