Dev Shed Lounge
 
Forums: » Register « |  User CP |  Games |  Calendar |  Members |  FAQs |  Sitemap |  Support | 
User Name:
Password:
Remember me
Go Back   Dev Shed Forums > Other > Dev Shed Lounge
Reload this Page

stopping someone from printing a page?

Discuss stopping someone from printing a page? in the Dev Shed Lounge forum on Dev Shed.
stopping someone from printing a page? Dev Shed Lounge forum discussing anything that doesn't fit into the other forums. This is a place to relax, talk, and even have some friendly debate. Walk softly and carry a big wiffle bat.

Reply
Add This Thread To:
  Del.icio.us   Digg   Google   Spurl   Blink   Furl   Simpy   Y! MyWeb 
« Previous Thread | Next Thread »  
Thread Tools Search this Thread Rate Thread Display Modes
 
Unread Dev Shed Forums Sponsor:
  #1  
Old March 5th, 2003, 06:00 PM
Moebius Moebius is offline
Contributing User
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Dec 2001
Posts: 48 Moebius User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 1 h 26 m 36 sec
Reputation Power: 7
stopping someone from printing a page?
I have a project coming up where we'll be putting an entire book on a website. We want people to be able to read it, but we don't want them to be able to print it or download it. Are there any techniques for doing this?

Thanks much.
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old March 5th, 2003, 06:11 PM
rendy's Avatar
rendy rendy is offline
Moderator
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: London
Posts: 348 rendy User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 2 h 21 m 17 sec
Reputation Power: 7
No.

The've already downloaded it when they read it, and you can't stop anyone printing local files...

Basically if they can see it, then they can do what they want with it
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old March 5th, 2003, 09:28 PM
Moebius Moebius is offline
Contributing User
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Dec 2001
Posts: 48 Moebius User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 1 h 26 m 36 sec
Reputation Power: 7
What if its flash? I don't know how printing flash would work...
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old March 5th, 2003, 09:43 PM
wannabe wannabe is offline
=) wannabe?
Dev Shed Regular (2000 - 2499 posts)
  
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: florida
Posts: 2,153 wannabe User rank is Lance Corporal (50 - 100 Reputation Level)wannabe User rank is Lance Corporal (50 - 100 Reputation Level)wannabe User rank is Lance Corporal (50 - 100 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 21 h 58 m 25 sec
Reputation Power: 9
Send a message via AIM to wannabe Send a message via Yahoo to wannabe
a whole book in flash? That'll be an awful lot of work. You can still import it and try and print each frame.

Trying saving each page as a picture (make sure the background is not white), so if they try to print the whole book they'll run out of ink >
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old March 5th, 2003, 09:45 PM
Pasiphae1213's Avatar
Pasiphae1213 Pasiphae1213 is offline
Web Developer
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 171 Pasiphae1213 User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: < 1 sec
Reputation Power: 0
Send a message via AIM to Pasiphae1213 Send a message via Yahoo to Pasiphae1213
This method isn't foolproof, but it works for me.

If the page is an HTML page: define two stylesheets in the <head> section.

In the first: <link media="screen"...> make this your normal one...
In the second: <link media="print"...> and this will be the one that is used when the page is printed. You can include a watermark or even a font-color: #FFFFFF; to make the text the same color as the background, so when they print it, it won't show up.
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old March 5th, 2003, 09:47 PM
rod k rod k is offline
Apprentice Deity
Dev Shed Loyal (3000 - 3499 posts)
  
Join Date: Jul 1999
Location: Niagara Falls (On the wrong side of the gorge)
Posts: 3,237 rod k User rank is Private First Class (20 - 50 Reputation Level)rod k User rank is Private First Class (20 - 50 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 4 m 8 sec
Reputation Power: 13
Send a message via AIM to rod k
Um, no. Browsers can be set to NOT print the background.
__________________
FSBO (For Sale By Owner) Realty
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Old March 5th, 2003, 10:01 PM
Pasiphae1213's Avatar
Pasiphae1213 Pasiphae1213 is offline
Web Developer
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 171 Pasiphae1213 User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: < 1 sec
Reputation Power: 0
Send a message via AIM to Pasiphae1213 Send a message via Yahoo to Pasiphae1213
Or better yet, surround the entire page in a <div> with a unique id, perhaps <div id="page"> then

In screen.css
#page {
visibility: visible;
}

In print.css
#page {
visibility: hidden;
}

Then
<link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" type="text/css" href="screen.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" media="print" type="text/css" href="print.css">

The printer will use print.css in any browser that supports HTML 2.0+ (when <link media=""> was implemented)
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Old March 5th, 2003, 10:07 PM
Pasiphae1213's Avatar
Pasiphae1213 Pasiphae1213 is offline
Web Developer
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 171 Pasiphae1213 User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: < 1 sec
Reputation Power: 0
Send a message via AIM to Pasiphae1213 Send a message via Yahoo to Pasiphae1213
Quote:
Originally posted by rod k
Um, no. Browsers can be set to NOT print the background.


If you're referring to my post, I mentioned that it wasn't foolproof, and if you use font-color: #FFFFFF; like I mentioned.. on a white background, regardless of if they choose to print the bg or not, it will still be white text on a white bg.

If you're not referring to my post, what are you referring to?
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Old March 5th, 2003, 10:39 PM
Hero Zzyzzx's Avatar
Hero Zzyzzx Hero Zzyzzx is offline
11
Dev Shed Demi-God (4500 - 4999 posts)
  
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Lynn, MA
Posts: 4,635 Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 4 Days 23 h 44 m 19 sec
Reputation Power: 77
Send a message via AIM to Hero Zzyzzx
Set up your CSS'd pages and I think you'll find that browsers, mozilla especially, aren't dumb enough to print white text on a white background. Mozilla prints it as gray.
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Old March 5th, 2003, 10:55 PM
CyBorg CyBorg is offline
Junior Member
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Australian Hole
Posts: 2 CyBorg User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: < 1 sec
Reputation Power: 0
Question
PDF files are your best bet which alow for no printing which is rather affective, however you will most likey see the book all over kaaza the next day.but hey thats marketing for ya.

Or,

You could just make it impossible for user's to be bothered to print it out as you can see here
Reply With Quote
  #11  
Old March 6th, 2003, 12:23 AM
Moebius Moebius is offline
Contributing User
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Dec 2001
Posts: 48 Moebius User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 1 h 26 m 36 sec
Reputation Power: 7
Haha, good idea Cybord, i could make every page in the book a new HTML page. No one would want to go through all that and print each page. Then again, it would make it more of a hassle for viewers to read and scan through.

The print.css ideas are also good ideas and they would take care of printing it directly from the browser, but whats to stop them from copy/pasting all the text into word and printing it from there?

...which brings me to the next problem. Having the viewers save this on their computer is just as bad, or worse than them printing it out. I think this rules out a PDF file.

My idea with flash would work like this. I wouldn't actually have the text in the flash file. It would all be in an external text file that flash would then read in and display. I think you can make it so you can't select the text and the scrolling would be done in flash itself so even if it did print, it would only print where the user was currently looking. This idea would be a lot more clumsy and would introduce a whole new set of problems, but I think it would solve the biggest problem of printing and saving text. Am I correct in this?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We actually already have a PDF file. We want the viewers to register with us and answer a few questions, join our mailing list, etc and then we let them download the .pdf file. And I'm not worried about kazaa hehe. This is a book not many people would be interested in.
Reply With Quote
  #12  
Old March 6th, 2003, 08:21 AM
Onslaught's Avatar
Onslaught Onslaught is offline
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
Dev Shed Demi-God (4500 - 4999 posts)
  
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Somewhere in the great unknown
Posts: 4,840 Onslaught User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Onslaught User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Onslaught User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Onslaught User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Onslaught User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Onslaught User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Onslaught User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 2 Days 36 m 16 sec
Reputation Power: 88
Send a message via ICQ to Onslaught
If you do the text file feed, make sure the file isn't in a folder that can be accessed by the web else they could just type in the url and get the text file.

Also, two minor glitches with the css formatting is that 1) browsers can override your css with thier own and 2) they can save the page and hack it all they want.
Reply With Quote
  #13  
Old March 7th, 2003, 07:23 PM
jplush76 jplush76 is offline
Contributing User
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 85 jplush76 User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 13 m
Reputation Power: 6
Send a message via Yahoo to jplush76
you can never stop someone from taking images or content on the web, thanks to the magic button known as "PRINT SCREEN"

If I really wanted to I can print screen and paste into Word or Photoshop.
__________________
~jim~
Reply With Quote
  #14  
Old March 8th, 2003, 10:58 PM
Moebius Moebius is offline
Contributing User
Dev Shed Newbie (0 - 499 posts)
  
Join Date: Dec 2001
Posts: 48 Moebius User rank is Just a Lowly Private (1 - 20 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 1 h 26 m 36 sec
Reputation Power: 7
sure, but we're talking about an entire book here. You can't printscreen an entire book. I know this is true for images.
Reply With Quote
  #15  
Old March 9th, 2003, 09:50 AM
Hero Zzyzzx's Avatar
Hero Zzyzzx Hero Zzyzzx is offline
11
Dev Shed Demi-God (4500 - 4999 posts)
  
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Lynn, MA
Posts: 4,635 Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level)Hero Zzyzzx User rank is Second Lieutenant (5000 - 10000 Reputation Level) 
Time spent in forums: 4 Days 23 h 44 m 19 sec
Reputation Power: 77
Send a message via AIM to Hero Zzyzzx
Patient people can printscreen an entire book.

Where this conversation is going- if you give something to a user that they can view on thier computer, they can copy it and print it. End of discussion.

All you can do is make it a pain in the *** to use for everyone, which still won't shut out the determined pirates. Notice how every option brought up was shot down by something that would take a very moderate amount of technical ability?
Reply With Quote
Reply

Viewing: Dev Shed Forums > Other > Dev Shed Lounge > stopping someone from printing a page?

« Previous Thread | Next Thread »

Thread Tools  Search this Thread 
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes  Rate This Thread 
Linear Mode Linear Mode