In other topics I’ve found that IE/FF doesn’t print background images by default. Now that’s a shame, because background images add some possibilities that are very difficult to reproduce with classical <img> tags:
- You can align them both horizontally and vertically
- You can crop them if they are larger than the target element (which also enables the idea of CSS sprites)
Now, it’s not impossible to do, but it will require me to have different HTML layouts for printing and normal page, and the printing layout will be quite overcomplicated (since I’ll have to use <table>s to achieve vertical alignment). Also, the benefits of CSS sprites will be lost.
Is there any hope? I gather that @media print doesn’t help, but isn’t there something else, maybe browser-specific, that would allow one to say: “Yes, this isn’t a normal background, it really needs to be there even in print view”?
Not possible. You would have to some how convert your background images to img or use Canvas. Of course using canvas depends on which IE you supporting.
Its a browser setting which restricts the printing of background images. I think the logic behind it was that the vendors wanted to give the users the option of printing background images and ensure that the web developer could not alter these settings through some sort of script.