Comment 136 for bug 10910

In Firefox 5, this problem seems to be worse than before.

1. I support a small architecture practice with 40 workstations on Windows (XP SP3).
- Due to their CAD package requirements, the OS cannot be changed (at least not in the near term).

2. The Firefox printer preferences dialog under Windows does *not* allow the paper size to be set at all.

3. The "native" printer preferences dialog under Windows *does* allow the paper size to be set, but the values are ignored by Firefox.

**Note: When the native printer setup dialog is called up from Firefox, it (wrongly) shows the printer page size to be Letter (it is actually set to A4). If I change it to A4, then the setting is actually shown as "A4 (97%)" indicating that the page will be reduced to fit. If I print with this setting, the output is the same (wrong).
--If, in the native print setup dialog, I go to the "printer settings", the page size there is also set to Letter; if I change that to A4, and then return to the print settings, then A4 becomes "A4 (100%)". If I print with these settings, the outputut is the same (and still wrong).

4. Under Firefox 2.0 (2.0.0.1) (on Windows), I successfully worked around the problem using "about:config" and manually editing all the printer page_size settings by hand.
- This worked.

5. Under Firefox 3.6 (3.6.12) (on Windows), the about:config workaround does *not* work - Firefox ignores any changes I make to the page_size_* settings, and in fact changes them back whenever I print to that printer.

6. Under Firefox 5 (5.0) (on Windows), the print_paper_* settings no longer exist in about:config.
- I have tried using "native" print setup window, and the values are always ignored.

I have a generated HTML page (timesheet report) that fits almost exactly on 2 A4 pages, but Firefox *always* renders it using Letter size, causing the bottom of the first page to be printed at the top of the second page; the content of the second page to start half-way down the second page; and the bottom of the second page to be truncated and not printed at all.

7. Google Chrome can print the same report perfectly.
- Sadly, this is my current workaround.

8. Interestingly - if I render the report in Firefox using IETab, then the pages print correctly as well.
--When I do this, the "Print Preview" window is different (it comes from IE); the printer preferences dialog is the same native dialog, but it shows the (correct) value of A4 by default, rather than Letter as it does when that same dialog is called up by Firefox.

This problem has been around, in some form, since Firefox 0.9.something, and it still exists. The indications are that there is no simple fix or patch that will correct it.
Perhaps the solution would be to take an existing open-source printing sub-system that works, and integrate it into both Firefox and Thunderbird?
The printing system from OpenOffice seems to work correctly on all platforms...

Cheers!
Nik