Web Printing Booby Trap?

[David L. King]

> Our library offers free laser printing from our networked computers, which
> provide web access via Netscape.  A few weeks ago, we found at one of the
> printers some 200 pages that were blank except for the following header: 
> The Anarchist Cookbook   http://www.sonic.net/~robroy/cookbook2.html#18

> This week, I found the same thing at another printer, so I decided to
> investigate.  When I went to http://www.sonic.net/~robroy/ I found a web
> version of <<The Anarchist Cookbook>>.  I thought I would try printing,
> and when I did I got the blank pages with the header (though I only got
> four of them since I had specified printing only pages 1-4).

Here, you need to change your print setup just a little. Go under File, 
then choose Print Setup. Make sure Black lines and Black text are 
highlighted - your pages were "blank" because Netscape was trying to 
print white text - sorta silly. Specifying Black Text makes all text 
print in black. 

>  I noticed
> that the URL that shows up in the Netscape Print dialog box (the same URL
> that is printed in the header) is different from the URL on which the
> actual <<Coobook>> appears.  It seems that when you print from URL X, the
> source for what you print is actually URL Y. 
> Could this be an intentional printing booby trap designed to trick people
> into wasting time and paper, or is it just a badly designed web page?

No, and Not Really. What you're dealing with here are Frames (which I 
don't care for). The address you're seeing is most likely the address for 
the Table of Contents for the page (which appears in Netscape on the 
left-hand side of the screen). When you want to print the text (on the 
right-hand side of the screen), you have to click on the frame you want 
to print, and then under File, choose Print Frame.  


		**************************************************
			David King
			Electronic Services Librarian
			University of Southern Mississippi
			dlking at ocean.st.usm.edu
			http://ocean.st.usm.edu/~dlking/
		**************************************************