Just as I often think (Dilbert creator) Scott Adams bugs my office, A List Apart has an amazing ability to produce an issue on a topic I was looking at the day before. The latest in a long line is A List Apart Issue 203, offering up some wisdom on print styles.

I've found that web pages don't really like being printed. Even worse is the way many clients expect the same level of control as with print jobs - the print designers get exactly what they wanted, why can't the web team do the same? *collective sigh*

We can still do a good job under these circumstances, of course. Hey if we wanted easy lives we'd have gone into lion taming or something. We can set appropriate print colours and typefaces, we can hide navigation and other items that you don't need in print.

But then there are the sticky points - for example, where did that link go? The printout just has underlining. So, no problem, you generate some content:

a:after {
content: " (Link: "attr(href)")";
}

Sweet! Well, for about 10% of the audience anyway. The IE borg are still wondering where those links went. Even the 10% who are seeing the links don't always like a bunch of URLs in the middle of the content.

Unobtrusive Javascript to the rescue! Footnote Links | Easy Designs works in IE as well as non-crippled browsers. Sure, it requires Javascript... but I'd be pretty comfortable saying most IE users don't turn off Javascript.

Of course the text size still changes between browsers; but that will have to wait until another day. In the meantime, I'd like Mr Adams and the ALA crew to tell me where they've hidden the cameras.