How To Change Or Customize Firefox Printing Defaults
Typically, when printing in Firefox, selecting the default print setup is sufficient for most cases. But if you need to change or customize printing, Firefox gives you the ability to customize the headers and footers of your print job in several ways. Information can be placed in the upper left corner, center, and upper right corner of the header and footer of the page.
Firefox printing, allows you to have a choice of options to customize printing using the following items, via drop-down menu, that can be placed in any or all of the six locations in the header or footer.
–blank–: If selected, nothing will be shown.
Title: The title of the web page will be shown.
URL: The entire URL of the web page will be shown.
Date/Time: The current date and time will be shown.
Page #: The page number (i.e., 3) of the current print job will be shown.
Page # of #: Similar to Page #, this will not only display the number of the current page but also the total number of pages in the current print job (i.e., 1 of 2).
Custom: Type your own text. You can include any of the following codes to print specific information:
&PT: Page Number with Total (Example: "3 of 5")
&P: Page Number
&D: Date
&U: URL
&T: Page Title
To view and change print options, from the menu, select File \ Page Setup… then click on the Margins & Header/Footer tab.
At the bottom, in the Headers & Footer section, selecting any of the six options (3 for Header and 3 for Footer), you can modify how you want information displayed when printing. For example, selecting the Header Left drop down, you can change the display from Title to URL and select OK.
Which will now display the URL of the Web Site page instead of the title in the upper left hand corner of the Header:
Just as you can make changes to the Header, the same type of changes can be made to the footer using any of the options listed above, or you can customize with any text.
Say you wanted to add custom text to the to the center of the Header. Just click on the Center drop down box, select Custom, and enter text in the Custom box and click OK.
The custom text will now appear as shown in the below screen shot:
With adding Custom text, you can also combine any of the above listed codes to print specific information. For example, combining &D &T will print the date and time together:
TIP: If you want to experiment with changes and view them before printing, select File \ Print Preview from the menu, and select the Page Setup button.
After you make your changes and select OK, Print Preview will immediately update the changes, allowing you see exactly how the page will be displayed before printing.
Filed under Firefox and Internet Explorer Tips by Watching The Net
Comments on How To Change Or Customize Firefox Printing Defaults »
Great. But after I've done all that customization for the single document that I wanted to print in a different way, how can I restore the default settings? (I can't even remember what all of them are.)
It is odd that Firefox does not include a method to restore the default settings, but in any case, here are the defaults:
Header:
Title, –blank–, URL
Footer:
Page # of #, –blank–, Date/Time
Watching the Net:
Neither does Internet Explorer 6. I wanted to remove the default headers in a program I was using - on the Print Setup page I wiped out headers and footers. Then the next time I tried to print something from Internet Explorer, they were also gone in there! It seems the program where I deleted them was using IE to print its reports, but it had changed the look enough that I didn't notice!
I googled "standard IE headers" and found a site that showed them, and the code used to configure them.
In Firefox: Not sure what the default was, but I use the following and it is helpful:
Top Left: Title……….TopCenter: Blank………….TopRight: Date/Time
Bottom LeftURL…….Center LeftBlank………..BottomRight: Page # of #
Here are the Internet Explorer defaults, at least for IE6:
Default header code: &w&bPage &p of &P
Default footer code: &u&b&d
IE6 Header & footer Command codes: You may also want to manipulate your header & footer, which you may do by referring to this table.
Header & Footer Command Codes As displayed after clicking on "?" then in Header/Footer box in Page Setup window.
Code Function:
&w Window title
&u Page URL address
&d Date in short format (as specified in Regional Settings in Control Panel)
&D Date in long format (as specified in Regional Settings in Control Panel)
&t Time in format specified in Regional Settings in Control Panel
&T Time in 24-hour format
&p Current page number
&P Total number of pages
&& Prints "&"
&b Center text immediately following code
&b&b Right justify text after second &b. (Center text between &b's.)
–J-Mac
J-Mac
Great info, this will come in handy when I'm using IE. I also believe (but could be wrong) that the Header & Footer command codes also work in IE 7.
I don't have IE7, but I thought I saw a post somewhere that they are changed. That may mean the settings location, though.
Great tips.
One thing I'd like to know is: once I've got the setup how I like it, can the print button be configured to just print? I mean without bringing up a dialog box that I have to click OK in.
@Arnie To do this you will need to make a change to Firefox config:
1 - Type about:config in the address bar
2 - Right-click anywhere in the white space, click on "New –> Boolean" and type
print.always_print_silent
and set the value to True.
This will force Firefox to print with out any prompts. The drawback with using this is that you will not be able to make any changes to your print options (make sure everything is set first). To disable or remove the entry, right click and set it to false or reset and restart Firefox.
Thanks! That worked great.
Glad to help out Arnie!
Useful information and comments - thanks everyone. I had not found the drop down lists in Firefox "Margins and Headers and Footers" menu.
But unfortunately it doesn't solve my problem. Can anyone tell me how to prevent the headers and footers from being printed right at the edges of the paper please? I can't get my printer to adjust these settings. Suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Well information is quite good. But i am facing a strange problem. I can see Print preview but its printing blank pages, only header and footer is printed. This is happening on 2 computers only. working with mozilla firefox 2.0.0.12
I see the header/footer section of the page setup in Firefox (2.0.0.9 on Debian 4.0r1 linux). My H/F settings are still the default, so I should be getting title, URL, page and date/time. In print preview, I do indeed see these. However, when I actually print, there are no H/F printed…
I have 2 errors. Firefox print preview is blank and printed pages are black. This happened after i installed adobe pro8. How can i fix this. IE7 prints fine?
Jumans
@jumans
Try uninstalling adobe pro8 and see if printing returns back to normal. If it does, you should contact Abode for support.
I have the problem of being able to use Firefox Page Setup to adjust margins but not Headers & Footers. No matter in what order I place the elements they do not print.
Any suggestions to overcome this problem?
Yeah, but how do you reset the default printing values?
@Gene
It needs to be reset manually. Here are the defaults:
Header:
Title, –blank–, URL
Footer:
Page # of #, –blank–, Date/Time
i succesfully solved this problem for myself.
i have printer named 3120.
go about:config
enter keyword "edge"
then i change this values so :
print.printer_CUPS/3120.print_edge_bottom=60
print.printer_CUPS/3120.print_edge_left=40
print.printer_CUPS/3120.print_edge_right=40
print.printer_CUPS/3120.print_edge_top=40
by the way sucha variables as
print.print_edge_bottom
print.print_edge_left
print.print_edge_right
print.print_edge_top
DOES NOTHING.
then i go to file-page options-margins & header/footer-
i setup margins :
top=0.8 inch
bottom=0.8 inch
left=0.5 inch
right=0.5 inch
and my paper size is set as "letter (8,5×11 inch)", though i print on A4. but unfortunately firefox do not print properly on paper A4 when it is on A4. that is paradox for me.
that is all.
and i don not understand. why so long ( now we have firefox 2.0.0.13) firefox have such basic stupid mistake.
by the way if firefox have
top=0.9 or top=0.7 then it printed page only about 25% of its content.
and that is not all.
if top position of page intersect position of header, then top part of page destroy header. and in this case header did not print.
There are a lot of pages that simply do not print well from almost ANY browser. The biggest offender IMO, sadly, is Firefox. "Sadly" because Firefox is my main browser! Yet many times I get web pages that should be maybe eight or 10 page long printouts yet Firefox's Print Preview shows one page - the others are either not shown (and therefore not printed) or print blank pages.
IE has the age-old problem of cutting the right side off of pages. Grrrr. How many times have I printed off some pages I really needed when I was in a rush and then, later when I try to read or otherwise use them I see that the last two, three, or even more words are cut off the right side. Frustrating!
Believe it or not my solution to ALL web page printing is….. download Opera and keep the latest version on your computer. Opera is actually pretty cool, though it is missing a few features that keep me from switching to it full-time. It browses pages a LOT faster than either Firefox or IE - any version. And it even loads uop faster than other browsers.
But the great thing it does is its amazing ability to reduce any web page to fit perfectly in the monitor display. And print them perfectly!!! Anytime I am using Firefox - which is most of the time - and I have a printing problem in it, I use the "Opera View" toolbar button - installed via an extension aptly named "Opera View" - and Opera instantly opens to that very web page. I click the Print button and whatever printing problem I was having is solved instantly! Then, of course, I close Opera and switch right back to Firefox and continue browsing.
Opera has solved just about all my web page printing problems.
J-Mac