Printing problem

Poster: DavidGSL
Dated: Wednesday August 4 2004 - 21:45:58 BST

Normally this wouldn't concern me much, but our client is refusing payment until this is resolved.

Printing the newest version of the Milonic menu results in a rather skewed diagonal pattern. It only affects a small number of computers. For example, of 10 computers in the office, two can recreate the problem. I've tried different drivers on our HP LaserJet 4050, from PCL to PS and nothing changes the problem. I also have tried other printers and most of them seem to work as well. It also happens even if the menu is completely comprised of text instead of the graphics used currently.

The site is: http://hagel.senate.gov/

Here is a picture of the printout:



An interesting note, this happens on multiple sites using the newer version(s) of the Milonic menu. On some of our sites running older versions of Milonic, they print fine. This rules out a printer driver problem, in my opinion.

Please help

David

Poster: John
Dated: Wednesday August 4 2004 - 23:00:04 BST

Andy will have to take this one, David.

As it happens, I have the same problem, but only on one of my printers (HP1200). My others are all fine, and all from the same machine. In my case, at least, I'm pointing to the driver.

Poster: fredlongworthhighschool
Dated: Thursday August 5 2004 - 9:53:06 BST

Have you tried installing a PDF printer and trying to print out the results that way? There are a few freeware PDF writers around.

Poster: DavidGSL
Dated: Thursday August 5 2004 - 14:43:34 BST



I'm not sure how a PDF printer relates to this. The client is just trying to print their web page that includes the messed up Milonic menu. I'd love to blow it off to a driver or something, but they've tried all available drivers and it still happens. Again, the older version of the Milonic code doesn't do this, but with our current setup, we can't use an older version at this point.

Thanks for the help thus far.

Poster: DavidGSL
Dated: Thursday August 5 2004 - 14:45:25 BST



It does appear to be related to HP printers in some way. I've tried other printers and they all work. Something with this latest version of Milonic doesn't like some HP printers on some machines.

Baffling, I know

Poster: DavidGSL
Dated: Thursday August 5 2004 - 16:55:59 BST

Is there an "official" support method?

Poster: marty
Dated: Thursday August 5 2004 - 17:06:15 BST

Hi guys,

The 'official' support route would be at http://www.milonic.com/reqsupport.php

-Marty

Poster: DavidGSL
Dated: Thursday August 5 2004 - 19:07:07 BST

Thanks Marty. By the way, the "Remember my login" feature never works for me. Pretty annoying to have to relogin every time.

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Friday August 6 2004 - 0:03:07 BST

Hi,
Just one thing, I went to the page and downloaded it to look at the files, I notice you are using Version 5.0 Release Candidate 37 Built: Thursday January 8 2004 - 19:16, that is way way down level. Between that and now there have been numerous upgrades, we are on final release version 5.39. What you have is from the beta level. There have been at a minimum, 60, and probably a lot more releases. Try upgrading and see if that fixes the problem.

Ruth

Poster: John
Dated: Friday August 6 2004 - 0:07:12 BST

Good point, Ruth.

David, please note that officially, only the most current release is supported (see http://www.milonic.com/menuvinfo.php).

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Friday August 6 2004 - 2:33:22 BST

Also, just for information, which might help localize the problem, you said two computers can reproduce the problem but the others don't show it. Which OS are reproducing it? And, do all the computers use the same printer. Because it would seem that there is more involved here than just the printer and menu if they all use the same printer, somehow the OS has to be involved, I would think.

Ruth

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Friday August 13 2004 - 5:06:32 BST

Hi David,

I may be a bit late here, but what the heck... Chuck Hagel is my senator, so I'll take a shot.

I'm a little confused. I had a look at the url you posted. It looks to me like you have a v5 copyright notice, along with a professional license number. But you are using v3.5.15 on the site. Did you try the latest release as Ruth suggested (update from your v5 RC beta)? Did you revert back to v3.5.15 because the latest v5 release didn't work?

Anyway, I notice a couple of odd things on the site. You have inline javascript code at the top of your .html file, even before the <!DOCTYPE> tag. You also have all of the menu code -- the inline menu_array code plus the mmenu.js file -- after the closing </head> tag and before the opening <body> tag. Strictly speaking, all .js code should be inside of the head or the body. Don't know if you had your v5 implementation arranged similarly, but if you did, I suppose odd things could happen (although why that should affect printing i don't know).

Anyway... just my two cents. Are you going to give v5 another shot? If so, I'll keep my eye out as best I can if you need help.

Cheers,

Kevin

Poster: Andy
Dated: Friday August 13 2004 - 8:37:48 BST

Further to kevin's offer of help. Milonic are also prepared to get this problem fixed. I beleive I emailed you a short while ago about this and will need your help fixing things things because I can't reporduce the problem in the office.

If anybody else is having trouble printing let us know and we'll see what we can do.

Cheers
Andy

Poster: Marc-Andre.Roberge __at__ mus.ul
Dated: Friday August 13 2004 - 21:31:18 BST

In case it helps, I can say that printing on an HP LaserJet 2200D using the latest PCL 5e driver works fine. But I remember having problems printing my own page with an horizontal Milonic menu last year. The problem has disappeared; I cannot say if the problem was corrected by the menu code or a printer driver. A worse problem is that the right side of the page is truncated, a problem that unfortunately affects too many sites.