[WEB4LIB] Printer - friendly

[Thomas Dowling]

----- Original Message -----
From: Gary E. Masters <gmasters at tamiu.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 1999 3:05 PM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Printer - friendly


> I was trying to cut and paste from a Washington Post article this
morning
> and found that it owuld not highlight.  Then I notices a "button" for
> printer - friendly" text.  I could highlight that text.  I did a print
> preview of the first "unfriendly" text and saw a mess.  Is this part of
> HTML?  If so, where do I look for it on the page?
>

You don't mention your browser or its version (tsk, tsk), but I can
recreate this with Netscape 4.7 running on NT.

I suspect that this particular NS flakiness is not due to HTML, but to
HTTP.  Note the headers on the printer unfriendly version of an article
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/A10233-1999Nov2.html):

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Netscape-Enterprise/3.6
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 20:25:49 GMT
Expires: Tue,  2 Nov 1999 20:25:50 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache
Set-cookie: RMID=c61e7816381f48c0; expires=Fri, 31-Dec-2010 23:59:59 GMT;
  path=/; domain=.washingtonpost.com
Content-type: text/html
Connection: close


Versus the corresponding printer friendly version:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Netscape-Enterprise/3.6
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 20:45:54 GMT
Set-Cookie: gx_session_id_FutureTenseContentServer=5359fbff0f67dd24
Content-Type: text/html
Connection: close



My hunch is that Netscape is looking at that "Cache-Control: no-cache"
header and getting freaked out about letting you do anything with the
local copy.  If you view source or try to print the first version, you'll
see that it goes back to the server to get a fresh copy instead of using
the local copy (which is correct), and I'm guessing that it is mistakenly
or at least ill-advisedly extending that protectino to selecting text to
copy.

Regardless, what you're seeing is a specific browser's reaction to a
specific circumstance.  The other browsers on my workstation have no
problems with this.

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu