Printing Tables in Color

[Copyright 2002,2003,2004,2005 Frank Durda IV, All Rights Reserved.
Mirroring of any material on this site in any form is expressly prohibited.
The official web site for this material is:  http://nemesis.lonestar.org
Contact this address for use clearances: clearance at nemesis.lonestar.org
Comments and queries to this address: web_reference at nemesis.lonestar.org]

Many of the tables and charts at this site utilize color to signify items that are of a similar function or have other relationships. Although almost all graphical web browsers will display these colors on the screen, if you print the same page on a color printer, these colors may not appear. Any background graphics may also be omitted when you print a web page.

On many web sites, omitting the background color and shading or image is usually beneficial because printing a non-white background or shaded areas could result in an unreadable hard copy if printed in black and white, and extremely slow printing when printing in color. It may also waste a lot of ink.

However, most pages on this web site are more useful when they have been printed in color, including background color. The instructions for enabling color background printing for various web browser programs are shown below.

This information is not meant to indicate a recommendation of a particular web page browser, only to tell you where the control that needs adjusting has been found in various versions.

Setting Changes for Mozilla 1.6 for FreeBSD

In Mozilla 1.6 for FreeBSD (and possibly on other platforms), Select File -> Page Setup... and other Options, check the box marked "Print Background (colors & images).

Earlier versions of Mozilla do not appear to have a way to print the background color of tables. The exact version where this capability was added is not known.

Setting Changes for Apple Safari - OSX 10.2/10.3

By default, Safari will print the colors in the backgrounds of tables. There does not appear to be a control available to disable this behavior.

Note: As of November 2003, Safari does not correctly render tables when printed, in that they do not expand from margin to margin as they do on the display, even if that behavior is explicitly ordered by the HTML TABLE WIDTH="100%" directive. This behavior needs to be taken into account when developing web pages using Safari, understanding that tables will look different (usually notably smaller) when printed using Safari instead of being "what you see is what you get". Tables will also print and display larger in all other web browsers. Hopefully Apple will fix this non-standard web browser behavior in some future version of the product.

Setting Changes for Netscape Navigator 4.3 - 4.x - All Platforms

Under the Edit button, select Preferences. Then click on Appearance so that it expands/explodes, and then click on Colors.

On the Colors panel, locate the section labeled "Sometimes a document will provide its own colors and background." Make sure that "Always use my colors, overriding document" is not checked. Then press Ok.

Note: Netscape Navigator versions before version 4.3 do not have any documented way to print color backgrounds.

Setting Changes for Netscape Navigator 6.x - All Platforms

Under the Edit button, select Preferences. Then click on Appearance so that it expands/explodes, and then click on Colors.

On the Colors panel, locate the section labeled "Sometimes a document will provide its own colors and background." Make sure that "Always use the colors and background specified by the web page" is checked. Then press Ok.

(This has not been tested on all platforms that Netscape Navigator 6.x is available for.)

Setting Changes for Internet Explorer 5 - x86 PC Version

Under Internet Options", select the "Advanced" tab. In the window of options, locate the "Printing" section. Check the box entitled "Print background colors and image".

Test Printing Background Colors

A small test page is available for testing your web browser and confirming that color table printing is working. That test page can be found http://nemesis.lonestar.org/site/color_test.html.