FileMaker WebDirect Printing via CSS

WEBDIRECT NEEDS the ability to print great output.  I’ve seen a lot posts on Linkedin and other forums where people are asking for printing solutions for WebDirect. Mike Beargie and AnvilWorks taken a large step towards solving this problem, and one that will help move WebDirect forward:

One of the largest hurdles to jump over in WebDirect’s scope of operation is the printing functionality. Thinking like a web developer instead of a FileMaker developer for a moment, what would you do to make your WebDirect “site” printable? As an FileMaker developer, you would first jump to having a secondary layout for printing that already has the formatting screen-ready. While that’s easy and possible, a web developer might say, “why don’t I just use a stylesheet that has rules for printing?”. Though it’s a bit of work in FileMaker, you can achieve a custom CSS stylesheet that will remove formatting to prepare any layout in your WebDirect solution for printing. Here’s how!

***Warning*** – This technique is not supported by FileMaker natively, and should be used with caution. Future updates of FileMaker may break this “hack”, and you should ALWAYS keep backups of your original system files when taking this kind of action. For this example, we will be using a virtual machine, Windows Server 2012 Standard, chrome for web browsing, Notepad++ for editing, and the filemaker server sample file as our test file.One of the largest hurdles to jump over in WebDirect’s scope of operation is the printing functionality. Thinking like a web developer instead of a FileMaker developer for a moment, what would you do to make your WebDirect “site” printable? As an FileMaker developer, you would first jump to having a secondary layout for printing that already has the formatting screen-ready. While that’s easy and possible, a web developer might say, “why don’t I just use a stylesheet that has rules for printing?”. Though it’s a bit of work in FileMaker, you can achieve a custom CSS stylesheet that will remove formatting to prepare any layout in your WebDirect solution for printing. Here’s how!

Read the whole thing and download the CSS stylesheet at the link.

via Anvil – Blog.

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