Missing ability to control a browser's print headers and footers

[dgavey]

Introduction

Since the CSS Print Module was adopted by all modern browsers, the ability to style and print documents from the web was almost a reality. One major piece is still standing between bridging the web world with the print world and that is the control of the print headers and footers when a document is printed through a browser.

Currently in most browsers, when a document is printed from the web a default header and footer is attached to the printed document that contains the URL where the document was generated from and the date and time it was generated.

Although it is currently possible to "turn off" the default headers and footers through most of the print dialog screens that are viewed before printing, the common user does not know how or care to discover how to shut these off manually. This unfortunately has lead developers to continue supporting PDF integration with their websites so they can fully control the printing experience of their users.

Proposal

There are currently 2 potential solutions as I see it.

1. When a document that is generated using a CSS Media type of print, the standards should specify that the print headers and footers should be defaulted to "blank" or "none"
2. An addition could be proposed to the W3C Print Profile draft (http://www.w3.org/TR/css-print/) that enables implicit control over the headers and footers generated by the browser's print subsystem.

Conclusion

This is a relatively uncomplicated proposal, yet it's implementation could significantly reduce the amount of third party tools (plug-ins) required on many websites where print control is an issue.

[hoganlong]

+1 -- This is a much needed feature.

[leobalter]

Do we have any update on this? I wasn't able to find anything by quickly browsing the current CSS Print profile specs.