Turning off print feature for Webhelp

[ABennett]

I was asked by my boss to see if the ability to print the online help files could be disabled when publishing as Webhelp. I'm using H&M version 5. I've been looking around but don't see anything regarding this.

thanks.

Amy

[Tim Green]

Hi Amy,

It is impossible to prevent printing of web pages. Every web browser can print everything that it can display. If your material is so sensitive that you don't want anybody to print it you might consider not publishing it. Everything you put in a web page can always be copied and printed.

[John Waller]

Tim's right in that you cannot prevent determined users from printing any web page. e.g. View > Source then print or Print Screen or other means.

However you can discourage casual, convenient printing (print button or File > Print in a browser) by adding the following into your HTML Webhelp template inside H&M

<style type="text/css">
@media print {
body { display:none }
}
</style>

Don't be fooled into thinking that disables print entirely. It doesn't. It just prints a blank page when the Print button in the browser is pressed. This can confuse casual users into thinking their browser print button - or even the printer itself - is broken. Not sure if that's a good thing though.

[Tim Green]

As John said: This will discourage casual users, but it's very easy to get around it. So if your data are sensitive this would not be a good way to protect it...

[ABennett]

I understand the "getting around it" part. I just needed to make it not easily printable. Thanks much for the responses.