Please add a simple on/off button for the built in print function in Firefox.
It doesn’t work well.
I don’t need it or want it.
It has screwed up the print function (air print) on my MacBook.
Do you mean you want to use the old/native print dialog? On the right side of the print overlay (Command+P) there is a link to “Print using the system dialog…” – is that what you are looking to change from two clicks to one click?
Yeah, I know about that. However, it seems that the new Firefox has also altered how that print function works, and so I get lots of tiny articles that use about a third of a page. Very weird.
It seems most unlike Firefox to do something like this. More like MS – something we didn’t need, didn’t ask for, and that doesn’t work very well.
If everything looks normal on your Print Preview > More Settings panel, I suggest checking some settings under the covers:
(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.
(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste part of your printer name, and pause while the list is filtered – hopefully this will isolate that one printer so you can check what Firefox thinks about its paper size, scaling, margins, etc.
(3) Check to make sure the following preferences have sensible values (if you are in a country that uses metric measurements, your values may differ accordingly). If you need to edit any of these through about:config rather than the “More Settings” section of the print preview/setup panel, see the note at the end.
Unprintable area outside the margins:
-
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_edge_bottom– usually between 0 and 25 (this value is in 1/100ths of an inch) -
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_edge_left– usually between 0 and 25 (this value is in 1/100ths of an inch) -
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_edge_right– usually between 0 and 25 (this value is in 1/100ths of an inch) -
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_edge_top– usually between 0 and 25 (this value is in 1/100ths of an inch)
Margins:
-
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_margin_bottom– usually between 0.25 and 0.5 (in inches) -
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_margin_left– usually between 0.25 and 0.5 (in inches) -
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_margin_right– usually between 0.25 and 0.5 (in inches) -
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_margin_top– usually between 0.25 and 0.5 (in inches)
Paper Size:
There are numerous preferences, but I think this is the important one:
-
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_paper_id– 1 indicates “Letter”, 9 indicates A4, and other values could indicate anything from a quarter sheet to a label
(Note: the Save to PDF printer seems to have its own way of setting this value?)
Scaling:
-
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_scaling– 1 indicates 100%, 1.25 indicates 125%, 0.8 indicates 80%, and so on -
print.printer_EXAMPLE.print_shrink_to_fit– if this is set to true, Firefox ignores the scaling value and uses either 100% or whatever lower number is required to get the horizontal width of the page onto your designated paper size
‘’‘To edit or reset:’’’
You can double-click a preference to display an editing field, and change the value as desired, then press Enter/Return or click the blue check mark button to save the change.
Most of these do not have the reset arrow at the right end of the row, but instead a trash can icon to remove the preference. Firefox will re-read the default value from your OS the next time you go to print on that printer.
I shouldn’t have to do any of that in order to use Firefox as I have been using it since it appeared.
The current version is badly designed and needs to be fixed and that should not be the responsibility of the users.
(I know how to do all of that, but I shouldn’t need to.)
Typically if a Firefox program update has caused a problem with a frequently used feature, there will be at least a half dozen similar complaints at the same time. Yours is the only one I’ve seen like this in recent weeks.
Firefox sometimes records strange printer data; that is nothing new, at least for Windows users. Unless someone figures out what causes this intermittent issue, then it can’t be fixed at the program level and needs to be cleaned up by users.