One Hundred Papercuts

  1. Bug #684376
  2. Comment #11

Comment 11 for bug 684376

Revision history for this message
In , Otto Kekäläinen (otto) wrote :

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fi; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Gecko/20100106 Ubuntu/9.10 Firefox/3.5.7

The Mozilla/Firefox print dialog does not seem to work like the print
dialog in other Gnome applications:

Example:
1. In Firefox, the default file type is PostScript, while in Gedit it is PDF. (this bug report)
2. In Firefox the default file name is empty ".ps", while in Gedit it is
"print.pdf". (bug #485067)
3. In Firefox, the print dialog does not remember any settings unlike the
dialog in Gedit. If you for example choose in the Firefox dialog to make a
two-sided print, nothing of it is left when you restart Firefox. In Gedit every
change to any optio is saved - if you once choose to e.g. make a two-sided
print, all prints will be two-sided until the option is changed again.
4. The file dialog does not remember the folder last used (bug #454003)

In my opinion Firefox should implement the print dialog in the same way as
other Gnome/GTK apps do. The behaviour of e.g. Gedit is more correct and closer
to the principles for example described in the Gnome User Interface Guidelines.

Also I read the original Netscape's philosophy was "keep each dialog in the same state where it was last time".

Please make PDF the default file type or allow the dialog to remember the file type selected earlier.

I think PDF is a good default since it is a more common format than PostScript (I know that PDF includes PS, but from the regular users point of view they are not the same).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. On newest Ubuntu, open a page with Firefox
2. Choose File > Print
3. Choose Print to File
Actual Results:
Post Script is selected by default. For most users, it is really annoying. Since there is no way currently for the user to save a better default, they need to manually change the file type each time..

Expected Results:
PDF would be a more sensible and user friendly default.

The bug 485067 is closely related, but not duplicate.