New print

[brianeg]

Dear firefox
The new print function via Ctrl-p is not as user-friendly as the old one, as you MUST use the mouse to make options e.g. print selection. Would like to be able to use the old one by default
Udskriv ved brug af system-dialogen

BR

Brian

[jscher2000]

Hi Brian, there are bugs on file with the developers to:

• Add a new user preference and corresponding enterprise policy to skip the preview and go directly to the system dialog
• Add a new keyboard shortcut to skip the preview and go directly to the system dialog

I don't know whether these will be finished soon; Firefox 99 seems more likely than Firefox 98. Hopefully feedback like yours will move it up the priority list.

[rsbrux]

Why was any effort invested in changing this? I found the old "Print Preview" var more useful than the new print dialog.  @jscher2000 Out of frustration with the new print dialog, I am using the system print dialog as you suggest, but this deprives me of a print preview (not to mention many other useful features of the old approach). Please bring back the old Firefox print UI!

[jscher2000]

Hi @rsbrux, in what ways did the old separate preview/setup/print layout work better than the current combined layout for your needs?

(I don't know the original reasons for the change, and I don't think the old approach is coming back, so the best hope is to improve what we have.)

[rsbrux]

@jscher2000Thanks for your interest. It has been too long since I had access to the old print dialog for me to itemize the differences in detail, but here are my main complaints:

1. On some systems, the new print dialog presents me with a plethora of useless paper sizes, and is incapable of noting my default (also the printer's default) of A4.  There are some posts about this on Bugzilla.
2. Printing the desired content from web pages was always a chore, even with the old print preview, but I find the process of experimenting with scaling and orientation until I get the desired content on a reasonable number of pages and then selecting these pages more cumbersome with the new print dialog.

Like many others, I am frustrated that a lot of effort seems to have gone into "improving" something which was already working well for me (and others). I see lots of complaints posted about the new print module and none about the old one.  Meanwhile, old change or feature requests abound for other parts of the UI, such as bookmarks.

[sfcheri]

Thanks so much to jscher2000, a Support Volunteer and a top 10 Contributor, for finally providing a fix for the situation created with the release of FF for Mac around version 90.  As of FF for Mac 101, you can get the system dialog back.  He posted exact instructions that worked just fine for me (just updated to 104.0). I found his fix (dated 6/14/22) at the end of the FF Support archived thread "Default Print System."  You have to go to the very end of the thread.  His is the last entry.