This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.

Bug 8600 - include header and footer when printing
Summary: include header and footer when printing
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Windows NT
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 8601 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-01-03 19:13 UTC by Don Brutzman
Modified: 2010-10-04 14:57 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Don Brutzman 2010-01-03 19:13:45 UTC
4.4.8 The header element

Is it appropriate to say something like

        The header can also be included at the top of each
        corresponding page when printing an HTML document.
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-01-11 10:53:10 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: Would anyone do that? That seems like a weird typographical choice.

I suppose you could include the _text_ of the header in a page header or footer (as opposed to the element itself), but that's more of a CSS thing than a feature of the <header> element.
Comment 2 Don Brutzman 2010-01-26 07:26:41 UTC
this comment was prompted by the common practice of most browsers to include a header or footer on each printed page (giving title, filename, date, page number, url, etc.) when responding to a user's request to print.  presumably that could be controlled by header/footer definitions.

if an html page author defined a header and/or footer, and they weren't displayed when the page gets rendered (on screen, in hardcopy, etc.) then what is the point of defining the header and/or footer?

p.s. not clear what you were referring to regarding CSS, had trouble finding a header/footer description in CSS Recommendation (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1) or another appropriate reference.
Comment 3 Don Brutzman 2010-01-26 08:04:26 UTC
i guess the basic issue with <header> and <footer> being identified by this bug
entry (and also bug 8601) is whether they are strictly sections for content,
with no other functionality implied, or whether they also indicate that header
and footer information is presented on a page-by-page basis when the html is
rendered and presented.

presenting header and footer information is quite common when paginating
published papers or books.
Comment 4 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-02-14 02:48:12 UTC
*** Bug 8601 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-02-14 02:48:38 UTC
The above bug is the same thing for footer, so I'm merging these together.
Comment 6 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-02-17 23:58:17 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: This seems like something for the CSS spec. We could say something about the <header> and <footer> elements becoming headers and footers, but that would just open a can of worms of questions so long that we'd be updating that section for months until finally just removing it and pointing to CSS. So I think we're better off just pointing to CSS.

(Questions would include such things as "what happens when the header is big", "what if the header contains a plugin", "what if the header is position:fixed", etc.)