Scaling in Lion OSX with HP Photosmart C4780

[rjseward]

I have an HP Photosmart C4780 and I am running Lion OSX 10.7. I have found that print scaling does not retain its setting after the first page.

To replicate this on a Mac running Lion with Firefox 12.0 and attached to an HP Photosmart printer:

Open Firefox 12.0

Go to File > Page Setup and enter 150 in the Scale: box. Also set the Orientaion to Landscape. Hit OK.

Next open a page with a good bit of text - more than one page's worth. Select a bucnh of text - again more than 1 page of text.

Go to File > Print, make sure Firefox is selected in the drop down box, check Print Selection Only

Hit the PDF button and the select Open PDF in Preview.

Now observe that the first page is scaled to 150% while all subsequent pages revert to normal, 100% scaling.

Alternately you can just print the page and the same scaling problem will show up - fine on page 1, but small on pages 2 - n.

I have heard of other people with this same problem (see http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/869187), but I have yet to see a solution.

Any ideas? 

[Daniel_L]

Hey there!

Does this occur in other browsers such as Safari or Chrome?

[rjseward]

Re: Does this occur in other browsers such as Safari or Chrome?

No, Chrome and Safari both retain the scaling on all pages. Unfortunately, neither Chrome nor Safari has an option to Print Selection Only which is a must when printing certain portions of a web page.

Thanks,

R

[rjseward]

See bug report at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=684622 

[MBJustice]

Thanks for the information.  It appears that Mozilla is aware of the issue, and they've been working on it for quite a while.  Until Mozilla fixes this bug, your best resolution will be to use an alternate web browser. 

[rjseward]

Mozilla is aware of the situation - Yes. But I don't think they've actually been working on it. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=684622 where it says:

Assigned To: Nobody; OK to take it and work on it

In other words, even though this bug was known since September of 2011, no one has bothered to look into it. Firefox 14.0 has just come out, and the bug is still there. 

[Daniel_L]

I know that within Chrome you can save the page as a pdf, from which you can print any selected area that you desire. It is an extra step but as a workaround it should resolve the issue.

Because the bug is with Firefox and does not seem to be printer specific I would recommend this method.