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New Blog Posts: Merging Reports - Part 1 and Part 2

WebTier print

edited May 2004 in Server
I have just discovered that using the WebTier I need to do some kind of PDF
export to print it. This seems to be a major oversight not being able to
print a report, after all the whole point of reports is to print them. It
seems like having a compiler that doesn't generate an exe. Is this
functionality going to be added in the future.

Craig.

Comments

  • edited May 2004

    The goal of the WebTier is to produce content that a web browser can render
    without requiring a proprietary plug-in / ActiveX type of technology that
    must be downloaded.

    ReportBuilder's output to the web browser consist of dynamic HTML - by that
    I mean standard HTML and JavaScript. This technologically does not contain
    support for rendering to a printer. It is limited to HTML that a web browser
    can render. Using the Print button on a web browser does not provide good
    results.

    PDF provides very high fidelity and quality report output. The Acrobat
    reader can be used as a client side app that can preview, zoom, print etc.
    Acrobat reader is a plug-in that is already installed on most machines and
    has become a standard for portable documents. Users are very familiar and
    comfortable using it.

    At least that is our experience. Perhaps there is something out there other
    alternative technologies that we are overlooking.


    --
    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors Corporation
    www.digital-metaphors.com


    Best regards,

    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors
    www.digital-metaphors.com
  • edited May 2004
    I was just suprised because I have done some projects in the past with
    Crystal Web browser viewer and it offers this.

    render
    that
    browser
    other
    It
  • edited May 2004
    Nard,

    The only thing that would be nice into this story is that when we
    push the print-button, it starts the report in pdf, (as now) but then
    print's directly and closes the pdf. I know that this is hard to
    realize but it can be done, and it would be nice to have.

    I had alreay some users that made the remark that they had to do
    twice the action of the print-button (once in RB and once in
    AcroRead).



    Thx
  • edited May 2004

    Interesting. Do you know whether the viewer requires an ActiveX control or
    is the viewer pure HTML?

    --
    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors Corporation
    www.digital-metaphors.com


    Best regards,

    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors
    www.digital-metaphors.com
  • edited May 2004
    There are different versions. There is an ActiveX, Java and HTML viewer.
    They are downloaded automaticallly when the user goes to the report. I have
    not used the HTML viewer as I could not get it to work, but the other 2 work
    well.

    able
    them.
  • edited May 2004

    Thanks for that additional info.

    --
    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors Corporation
    www.digital-metaphors.com


    Best regards,

    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors
    www.digital-metaphors.com
  • edited May 2004

    Not sure how this would be implemented. Via JavaScript that manipulates an
    ActiveX control?

    --
    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors Corporation
    www.digital-metaphors.com


    Best regards,

    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors
    www.digital-metaphors.com
This discussion has been closed.