Wow. It’s truly incredible to see an article promoting an intentionally user-hostile activity on BoingBoing.
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It will also break the print to PDF feature.
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It’s not something browser will block because it can be used to legitimate things. You can have specific CSS for print to format the document better. You can hide some elements like ads, popups, videos and even menus that are useless in a printed document and can consume several pages. So browsers can’t block this feature because it’s useful. The person using this feature to mess with the user is the wrong here.
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This seems like a poster child of egregiously petty DRM:
People who know what they are doing (which almost certainly includes the scrapers or whoever you are worried about) will cut through it in seconds; hapless users with use cases you didn’t consider will end up cycling a bunch of blank pages through the printer. For what?
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Why would you limit data only to private entities? Specially those that sell it? This is anti scrapping and anti open web. Terrible post.
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This honestly feels like a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist.
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How do you deliver SCORM objects?
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In tin cans?
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Perhaps this article leaked through a time vortex from 1996
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Oh you kids today and your newfangled technology!
I gotta give him credit for listening to criticism and responding well.
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Yeah, what is the crisis? Who are these hordes who “print” websites? And why do we want to prevent them “printing” it? (What does it mean to “print” a website? Should I start “printing” websites? Is that a thing?)
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It also archives really well (if you use archival paper). But even normal paper will still be readable in 50 years, while your website might be long gone.
I print to PDF a lot. Moreso when I was working full time. Mostly recipes nowadays. I just like to have a local, universally readable copy. Rarely print them though.
Must still be popular; the Serious Eats site took away the “Print” button recently, and they received a lot of feedback. Print button returned not long after. I’m still mad they don’t include a picture of the finished dish. How else am I supposed to know what my food is supposed to look like?
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tell that to my newspaper! now i can’t read the comics at all!!!
that’s the last time i experiment based on someone’s bbs comment that’s for sure.
not so far as you’d think given the number of people who thought rob was serious.
though i am curious what site did this to him, and more important what was he trying to print?
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…I gotta tell you, if you asked me what site promoted this kind of intentionally-obnoxious and user-hostile design pattern as some kind of positive thing, BoingBoing would not have been my first guess.
What’s your followup, a piece on how DRM is awesome?
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I saw that sort of thing on a porn site. Apparently they never heard of the PRNT SCRN key → paste into Paint → crop the good stuff → Save to porn folder…
I mean a friend did.
Hmmm… I must be old… neither my main or backup keyboards have a PRNT SCRN key. When did they stop including it?
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Yeah. But it’s still a d**k move.
Should be just below the Sys Req key
If your keyboard doesn’t need a Molly Guard, are you sure that it’s powerful enough for your needs?
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Things have taken quite a turn since Cory left, eh?
/s in case it isn’t obvious
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