A lot of my answers to both email and clients used to begin: You can it, but only do it in IE. Or I'd assume they took that for granted and instead informed them it wouldn't work in Netscape. Now I find myself saying more and more often: You can do it in Firefox/Opera/Netsape^†. For example, last week I got asked two questions about printing.

1. Is it possible to prevent page breaks from being inserted in the middle of a paragraph?

Yes you can. Well, as long as the paragraph is smaller than a page. Otherwise, how can it do anything but? Here's how:

p {
 page-break-inside:avoid;
}

Simple isn't it!? The page-break-inside property was added in CSS2. However, the only browser that I've found to support it is Opera 7.5+.

2. Can I add a 3.5" margin to the top of the first printed page and 1.5" to the top of all others?

Yes you can. In theory. In practice the following CSS2 only seems to works in Opera 7.5+.

@page{
 margin-top:1in;
}
@page:first{
 margin-top:3.5in;
}

It uses margin settings of the page-box to govern the gap at the top of each page.

If you've got Opera (preferably the v8 beta) you can see both solutions in effect on this demo page. Notice I left the first letter of each paragraph in bold when printed. This should help see whether there's a page-break in any of them.

Now, I know Opera is a minority browser that is even less likely than Firefox to take over from IE any time soon, but, that's not the point. At least Opera is supporting this stuff. What's IE doing? Sitting on it ass! It's frustrating to think the solutions to problems are being dealt with and knowing there's slim chance we'll get to use them. Maybe Firefox will catch up sooner or later. Will IE ever? Don't hold your breath.

As developers we can help make a difference though. If enough of us tell enough IT Managers that things can be done, but not in IE, it can only be a matter of time before they take notice.

OT: I wrote this entry using a slightly twisted application of a Definition List. The first time I've ever used one ;o)

^† Delete where applicable.