CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Is there a reason that front-end CiviContribute pages do not use a printer-friendly format for printing.  When a member elects the "Pay Later" option, I would like the member to print out the filled-out contribution form and send it with his check.  Unlike other CiviCRM pages, clicking on the Print icon on the page produces a messy, entire web-page print.  I can print out a Profile page without any problem.

The Joomla demo appears to echo this issue.

Thanks for any insight.

Lobo,

Thank you for the response.  Just to be clear, it is the printer-friendly process that I am looking for.  The print icon works but produces a page with menus, headers, etc.

Since the CiviContribute pages use Javascript (window.print) for printing, then it must be a Javascript processing error I am experiencing.  I have tested, however, on three different computers (2 Macs and a PC) and three different browsers - they all behave the same.  I can go to other sites that use the window.print() command and it provides a printer-friendly output - I just can't get it to work on my site or the CiviCRM demo site.

I can produce printer-friendly window for a CiviContribute page by adding "&snippet=2" to the url of a CiviContribute page (this emulates how a profile page handles printing).  I am not sure how "snippet=2" actually works.  Although the window produced is printer-friendly (e.g., no menus), I get mostly a blank page if try to print it.

This is from the Joomla demo for a Profile Page:

<div id="printer-friendly"><a href="/index.php?option=com_civicrm&amp;task=civicrm/profile/view&amp;option=com_civicrm&amp;view=Profiles&amp;layout=search&amp;Itemid=7&amp;id=39&amp;snippet=2" title="Printer-friendly view of this page."><img src="/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/i/print-icon.png" alt="Printer-friendly view of this page." /></a></div>

versus the CiviContribute Page:

<div id="printer-friendly"><a href="javascript:window.print()" title="Print this page."><img src="/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/i/print-icon.png" alt="Print this page." /></a></div>

Please note that I forced the public display of the Test Profile Page I put on the demo by adding "&id=39" to the url.

I apologize in advance if I'm wasting anyone's time by trying to solve what is a local computer issue but appreciate any insight.

Thanks Dave for your response.

At some point in my life, I hope to become expert enough to make the kind of contribution you suggested.  I really do appreciate all of the hard work that goes into CiviCRM and would like to contribute to it (in addition to monetary contributions).

One question:  Would it be possible to use the snippet approach for CiviContribute pages that precede the Thank You page (before the contribution is submitted)?   In my case, I was asking members to print the page before submitting.  I am not exactly clear if the forms generated for these preceding pages use the same template as the Thank You page.

Sorry about jumping into this post after a while but I am curious is chapmanla got this solved.

I am learning my way around civicrm templates, but I am not sure how to follow Lobo's instructions for getting snippet=2 on the contributions thank you pages... I believe they are only called on the preview header.