HP Developer Community Blog

Value of print - In a world where screen media gets all the buzz, paper can lament, "I don't get no respect." Everyone says, "Paper is going away." Yet a steady 100 million printers sell every year. What can you do with a worldwide installed base of about half a billion printers?

Join the HP Developers Portal team in giving a salute to the first website dedicated to Print Developers:  www.print-dev.com. The new HP Developers portal has saved the best of print-dev.com com and will carry forward Will Hertling's vision of developers sharing their best code for printing from mobile, web, and PCs.

At Google I/O 2016, members of the Android Framework team explained Android's printing architecture and shared make-it-easy code for printing from mobile Android devices.

“Of all the different ways I have monetized my blog, printables were the easiest and the most no-brainer.”

When engaged in an epic battle, it's great to find an ally. Here at HP, we have found like-minded thinkers at MOO Inc., a paper-loving design company. In a blog post, Kai Turner, MOO's Senior Product Manger, explores the "physical-to-digital space and the future of paper." Like HP, Kai sees paper going digital and joining the emerging Internet of Things.

Value of print: A YouTube video of a toddler swiping and pressing images in a magazine fueled the popular debate between paper and digital readers back in 2011. The video, titled A Magazine is an iPad that Does Not Work, has been watched almost 5 million times. In 2013, Scientific American editors took on the debate, reviewing research that compared reading on paper to reading on screen.

Some of the hottest holiday gifts in 2015 look like wrist watches. The keys to the watch's comeback are a cloud connection and a host of new digital tricks. The same resurgence is happening for HP printers. What can you develop that takes advantage of 40 million cloud-connected printers on the Internet of Things?

Three ways to print from a web app directly to a printer (without going through the computer): Print by ePrint Print by Google Cloudprint Print by local network

A common question I see is how to print headers and footers when printing a webpage. An old stackoverflow post posed this question:

Some content needs to be printed in landscape. This is fairly common when you have spreadsheets or data-filled reports. This can be tricky when printing from the browser, because it relies on the user to select landscape printing, which is rarely the default orientation. If you use PDF generation on the server, it's relatively easy to enforce landscape orientation.

Web Printing Tutorial: Do your web pages print differently in different browsers? Use these PDF techniques to make printing from your website consistent and beautiful across all browsers.

Value of print - It has been half a century since Businessweek predicted the paperless "Office of the Future." Decide for yourself whether paper is going away, or whether half a billion installed printers can add value to your apps and websites.

Web Printing Tutorial: One of the most common needs when formatting a webpage to print is turning off regions that don't need to be displayed. As explained in the full tutorial, this is usually done with display: none;

All print APIs trace their code roots back to the humble Print Button – an on-screen button that opened the print dialog box. It is still one of the handiest pieces of code around.

Web printing tutorial: This tutorial explores the world of page layout using HTML and CSS to design printed pages. The goal is not merely a nicely printed web page, but a specific piece of printable non-web content, such as a brochure or book,

Value of Print - A scene from the classic British comedy says a lot about the attitude some screen-only developers take toward paper and printing.

Value of Print - Eric Weiner, a reporter for National Public Radio, also used the famous not-dead-yet scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to underscore his report about the endearing, enduring durability of paper.

Web printing tutorial: As a web developer working on print, I've often needed to see the impact of stylesheet changes to print media. This isn't always easy to do. It turns out you can preview print stylesheets directly in the browser on Chrome!  The basic functionality has been present for a while, but Google occasionally changes how you access this feature. These instructions work as of Chrome v.43.

Value of Print - More than 20 years into the Internet revolution, why are there still catalogs in my mailbox? Why did Lands' End bring back its catalog and create a host of specialty catalogs?  

NPR headline: Paper Notebooks Are As Relevant As Ever.  Handy, easy-to-carry moleskine notebooks are returning to classrooms. Taking notes with pen and paper requires a mental synthesis that typing lacks.