Disabling Print option in a browser

My work is asking me to make it so a webpage can’t be printed.
I’m not sure this is even possible (ignoring the Print Screen button)
I’ve made it so the user can’t right click (I know this can be overcome as well)

Any ideas welcome.

I wouldn't think its possible. Its like them asking you to write a Word document that can't be printed.

Don't people with big office chairs ask for some dumb things? :/

damn right they do, lol.
I thought it wasn't possible, unless anyone else knows some super secret way that this can be done.

You could use a separate style sheet for printing that hides the outer most element. Whatever measures you use, people will be able to overcome them using FireBug etc.

you could do a print style like:

html * {
display:none;
}

but there is no way to completely prevent it.

If someone knows a way of doing that, I'd be interested too. But what if the viewers are using FireFox, Opera, or some other non-IE browser? And there's no way of blocking the Pring Screen button, anyway. Or, they could just do File>Save As and save it to their hard drive to crack. For the more techie user, there's FRAPS, or even writing their own program to save the screen. And even if you magically block those, there's nothing stopping them from putting a video/still camera on a tripod in front of their screen, then using software to reconstruct it into a text/HTML file.

If you're trying to protect images or video, you could put banners or watermarks on them, like iStockPhoto does. Even that isn't fool-proof.

Good luck though; if there's any way of doing this, I'm listening too.

I'm getting all the pics watermarked.
It's all the other info (text and dimensions) that they are more bothered about, even though it's in our brochure that we send out too.

I think it's rather pointless. As said before, print screen will be all you need. I actually remember back to when a company ( microsoft? ) wereallowing you to make a "Wee Me" and you created your own avatar. You could view it and edit it, but you couldn't save it. BUT, people were actually buying a picture, they could see on their screen. It didn't last long of course, when people found the print screen key.

Anyway, your probably best explaining to them why it's a rather pointless thing.

Your next project should be a TV that you can't watch, followed by a silent radio. Some people are stoooopid. /sarcasm

Why on earth do they want the pages unprintable anyway?

Funny.

How can you protect the text? What will keep someone from just hiliting it and copy pasting it?

And stopping people from right clicking is just annoying. It doesn't solve anything? In Firefox, if you go to the Page Info selection, it lists all the media on the page and you can save it anywhere you want.

Or, anyone can just go look in the browsers cache. There are so many ways to get around stuff like that, all you really end up doing is pissing people off. And if you are selling something, pissing off your customers is not the path you want to take.

Why don't you write a web browser from scratch, and force viewers to download that and use it to view your content? You could force it into fullscreen mode, so they can't copy text from it.

Then, you'll need to somehow block the Print Screen button. There may actually be some way of doing this with a low-level assembly language, but it probably violates some MS EULA or something.

Next, all you need to do is make sure it has full control over the computer and doesn't allow any cpu cycles to go to any other program, in case users are using FRAPS or something. Again, probably made illegal by Microsoft.

So, to get around all these safegaurds, you'll probably need to write it from scratch in an assembly language, or maybe machine code.

Now, what if the users have camera pointed at the screen?...


Joking. :-)
I seriously doubt there's any way of protecting text. Sorry.

I'm thinking JKP and Pertubatio's stylesheet solutions are the most cost effective.

But Andy and big10p raise a valid points. Why would you want to prevent it? Think it through once more.

Alternatively you can serve a PDF instead of a html page, and set the desired DRM flags in that. It still won't prevent anyone who's dead serious, but I seriously doubt the information in said document is so important anyone would really care.

I don't want to. It's the big wigs asking.
I thought it wasn't possible but they said that there must be a way.
Shows just how much they know, lol

Oh management and their desire to add and remove carriage returns to web pages. I feel for you my friend I really do, but only because I relate. I deliver them miracles and they have no idea... *sheesh*

Well, i've always said stupidity is best countered with sarcasm. When they realise you are taking the piss out of them they stop asking for that stupid thing and go off to invent another.

As long as you leave 'em with a smile on their face. Really, it's the only defence i've found that works.

/me runs off to add more carriage returns to a web page, make it non-printable, and brain scan the end user.

Whats the point? Even if they cant hit the print button then they can still copy text and print that. And then theres screenshots/etc...

Simply copyrighting stuff will do fine.