Printing Canvas
Since I first started with IE Canvas the number one request has been printing support. The same applies to the successor, ExplorerCanvas and the WebFX Chart component.
In fact about 90% of the mails I’ve received about these projects has been about printing.
So a while ago I started to look into it, however Rostislav Hristov beat me to it. Thanks to him the current trunk version of ExplorerCanvas now supports printing of canvas elements in IE.
I’ve updated the WebFX Chart component to include the latest excanvas and also removed the media=”screen” declarations from the style sheet links.
As I don’t have access to a printer right now I haven’t been able to test it properly yet, however it shows up in print preview, both in IE and Mozilla and printed to file it looks fine.
Print preview in IE:
Print preview in Mozilla:
Now that graphics generated client side can be printed in both major browsers the biggest obstacle has been removed and there shouldn’t been much holding it’s adaption back.
September 7th, 2006 at 17:35
Hi Emil, it’s great that such an important issue is now closed. This is what free software is about. You can read my whole story with the charts/excanvas at http://www.asual.com/blog/standards/2006/06/30/charts-excanvas-and-printing.html
September 8th, 2006 at 14:53
Rostislav: It certainly is, printing was the biggest remaining obstacle and now thanks to your patch it’s been solved.
There are still quite a few limitations but enough is emulated to allow for the most common usage scenarios.