New beta versions of Firefox & Seamonkey with printing support are now available. These betas are part of a project sponsored by Mensys to provide full printing support in the Mozilla apps.
In Phase I, printing via CUPS or directly to many Postscript-enabled printers is supported. Printing using native drivers such as OMNI, LASERJET, etc. is not supported yet but will be in Phase II.
Firefox v4.0b7pre is available from:
ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/incoming/mozilla/firefox-20100919.zip
or http://e-vertise.com/warpzilla/firefox-20100919.zip
Seamonkey v2.1b1pre is available from:
ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/incoming/mozilla/seamonkey-20100919.zip
or http://e-vertise.com/warpzilla/seamonkey-20100919.zip
These betas are based on newer versions of the Mozilla code and should be more stable than the previous releases. Like the previous versions, they use Exceptq v7 to generate debugging reports should the app crash. Printing support is largely unchanged.
Printing Features
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* If you select a printer that uses a native Postscript driver (i.e. any printer that supports Postscript or any printer set up to use CUPS), the Mozilla app will create PS output using parameters taken from the driver. However, it won't actually use that driver; instead, it will send the output to the spooler via the IBMNULL driver. IBMNULL should already be installed on most systems; if not, you will have to reinstall it.
* If you select a printer that uses a native raster driver (i.e. any other type of driver such as EPOMNI), a PDF file will be created as is currently done. However, a file dialog will pop up so you can change the target's name and directory.
* Any time you get a 'Print to file' dialog, you can force the output to PS or PDF by setting the file's extension appropriately. This way, even when native drivers are supported, you'll still be able to get PDF output.
* Unlike the current implementation, this version won't create an empty file on your Desktop when you use Print Preview.
Notes about Printing
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* Support for Postscript printers is uneven. Most print without any problems. However, some don't, and no amount of experimentation has succeeded in getting them to print. If your model doesn't work, we ask for your patience until native driver support is implemented. No problems printing via CUPS have been reproted.
* In order to send output through IBMNULL, the program adds it to the printer's list of supported drivers. If you open the printer object's Properties notebook to the 'Printer driver' page, you'll find both the PS driver and IBMNULL are selected in the upper box. To avoid problems when queueing several print jobs, it isn't removed/deselected when done. As long as the PS driver remains the default (i.e. it's selected in the lower box), this shouldn't cause any problems - if it does, please let me know.
* Printing directly from an email window in Seamonkey fails. Instead, open 'Print Preview', then select the 'Print' button.
Exceptq
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* If the app encounters a fatal error (i.e. crashes), Exceptq will emit a two-tone beep and generate an exception report in the exe's directory. The report's name is based on the process & thread ID of the thread that crashed, and has an extension of '.TRP' (e.g. 003A_1.TRP). Reports are usually 30-50kb but may be larger.
* While most of the report is of little interest to users, at the end is a list all dlls loaded into the process. It my be worthwhile to scan it for dlls that shouldn't be there, such as dlls loaded from another Moz app or dlls for plugins that you didn't know were still installed.
* Please do NOT email or post these reports unless requested. We still have to work out an orderly system for collecting and acting on them.
Rich Walsh
From:
Source: OS2VOICE.org