tossedsalad Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 I am still caching with paper and I like to use my B&W laser printer since the printing will not run. But I have trouble with the choice of colors used on the page. The one place where I see (or not see) the printing repeatedly is the yellow stars used to indicate the difficulty. Yellow does not print very dark at all on my laser printer. I understand that different colors are used to allow easy viewing in color, but yellow is not a good choice even in color and is nearly invisible in B&W. Could this be changed to, say, red or maybe orange? That would show up much better... Link to comment
+The Leprechauns Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 Hmmmm he may have a point. The colored stars for terrain and difficulty are even used on the "print friendly" versions of the cache pages. Similar to how cache attributes print out as text rather than as graphics on the print friendly page, could the terrain and difficulty stars print out as text, as in 3/3.5? Link to comment
+Milbank Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 Very good point. I also print them in black and white. Link to comment
+Rick618 Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 (edited) I checked to see if the stars print and they show as an asterick and a 1/2 as I am prone to cutting and pasting just the important parts of the cache page and can normally get several on a page, just paste in word, notepad, etc and print. Works well with benchmarks too. Difficulty: *1/2 Terrain: * Edited October 1, 2005 by Rick618 Link to comment
+Prime Suspect Posted October 1, 2005 Share Posted October 1, 2005 You're right. In the same way that the attribute icons convert to text in Printer Friendly mode, the stars should as well. Link to comment
tossedsalad Posted October 2, 2005 Author Share Posted October 2, 2005 Personally, I don't use the "print friendly" format. Certainly it does have its advantages, but I print all the logs to a PDF file and then print the first two pages of that to paper, front and back side of one sheet. With the print friendly version I can only get 5 logs no matter how much room that leaves on the page. I really want to get a Palm that will display PDF files, or use GSAK so that I can have the entire history (and stop killing trees). But until I get a job I am stuck with paper. Link to comment
+Cornix Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 Personally, I don't use the "print friendly" format. Certainly it does have its advantages, but I print all the logs to a PDF file and then print the first two pages of that to paper, front and back side of one sheet. With the print friendly version I can only get 5 logs no matter how much room that leaves on the page. With a little bit of URL fiddling you can have the best of both worlds. Just change the URL of the printer friendliy page for example from ... &log=y&numlogs=5&decrypt= to ... &log=y&numlogs=20&decrypt= This is how it looks like: .../cache_details.aspx?pf=y&ID=23426&log=y&numlogs=20&decrypt= Cornix Link to comment
+HHL Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 ... &log=y&numlogs=y&decrypt= that will get you all logs. happy hunting - the old fashioned way (trads only, exceptions may appear) Link to comment
Jeremy Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 On the printer friendly page the link also changes to "all logs" so you don't need to remember the URL changes to get it to work. Link to comment
+Thrak Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 The OP is correct though - Yellow is a very poor color whether printing in Black and White OR printing in Color. It just doesn't show up well when printed. Link to comment
+PDOP's Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 Another suggestion for the print friendly page would be to have the option to lose the map image/link. It's to small to be of use in most cases and is a waste of ink. Link to comment
+sTeamTraen Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 The OP is correct though - Yellow is a very poor color whether printing in Black and White OR printing in Color. It just doesn't show up well when printed. This could probably be fixed by a narrow black border around the edge of the star (one pixel wide would do). Link to comment
+Ambrosia Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 Another suggestion for the print friendly page would be to have the option to lose the map image/link. It's to small to be of use in most cases and is a waste of ink. I actually use that map quite a bit. In your local area, it can be quite usefull, even though it's small, because you know the area better. Don't get rid of it, I need it a lot! Link to comment
+Cornix Posted October 4, 2005 Share Posted October 4, 2005 On the printer friendly page the link also changes to "all logs" so you don't need to remember the URL changes to get it to work. I can't find the link or button to do this, only 5 logs/no logs. Cornix Link to comment
tossedsalad Posted October 4, 2005 Author Share Posted October 4, 2005 On the printer friendly page the link also changes to "all logs" so you don't need to remember the URL changes to get it to work. I can't find the link or button to do this, only 5 logs/no logs. Cornix Yeah, I don't understand what Jeremy is talking about either. HHL, thanks for the fix, but at this point I am happy with the standard page and the "printer friendly" page still doesn't solve my issue with the difficulty stars appearing. I guess the PF page is more concise and would let me get more log entries on my two pages of print. I may give it a try at some point, but it takes long enough to print all the caches for a day now. Manually tweeking the URL would just add to that. I really should go paperless, but there are issues with that as well. I drop my GPS all the time (there's another issue, carrying too much in my hands) and I don't know how long a PDA would last in the field. I spent over half an hour looking for a 1.5 difficulty cache yesterday and ended up dropping the GPS off a log once and I tripped in a gopher hole and dropped (no slammed) everything on the ground, including my ankle. I lived, but I don't think a PDA would have. On the other hand, if I had been using a PDA, I would have had the log entry from a couple of weeks ago saying that the container was MIA and where to look for the hidden log book, so I likely would not have found the gopher hole! Just to go back the other way once more, having paper on a clipboard also makes me look a bit more official. So I guess I'm still in the standard page printout camp for the moment. Link to comment
+GeoForse Posted October 7, 2005 Share Posted October 7, 2005 (edited) How about a clipboard to carry your PDA. (edit for fat fingers) GeoForse Edited October 7, 2005 by GeoForse Link to comment
+Husker Posted October 7, 2005 Share Posted October 7, 2005 I think Jeremy has confused the "(show 5 logs)" printer friendly link to be show all. Anyway, rather than mess around with the stars, just go with the old fashion number system, 1, 1.5, 2, ect. Link to comment
tossedsalad Posted October 7, 2005 Author Share Posted October 7, 2005 I thought we might have a chance of getting the star color changed since Jeremy responded. I didn't see responses from anyone else that I recognize as working for Groundspeak. Personally I see this as a very simple and effective change to make. Just replace the "halfstaryellow.gif" and "staryellow.gif" references with a red version or an orange version or possibly even a mauve version. Heck, it could even be a slightly darker shade of yellow! Just so it shows up on a B&W laser printer. Link to comment
+Prime Suspect Posted October 8, 2005 Share Posted October 8, 2005 I thought we might have a chance of getting the star color changed since Jeremy responded. I didn't see responses from anyone else that I recognize as working for Groundspeak. Personally I see this as a very simple and effective change to make. Just replace the "halfstaryellow.gif" and "staryellow.gif" references with a red version or an orange version or possibly even a mauve version. Heck, it could even be a slightly darker shade of yellow! Just so it shows up on a B&W laser printer. We don't need different colors. What might be differentiated on one PC/Printer may look exactly the same on another. All that needs to be done is to convert it to text in the printer-friendly version, just like the attribute icons are. It's consistent, and will work on any set-up. Link to comment
tossedsalad Posted October 8, 2005 Author Share Posted October 8, 2005 I don't get your point. Yellow is very hard to see on a white page. On a B&W printer, only the intensity is used. The current yellow color has a very high intensity, so it shows as nearly white. If the color is changed to one with a lower intensity, it will show up better on all printers, color or B&W regardless of brand or model. They are using a dark green for the terrain. All they need to do is change the yellow to an adequately dark yellow (not sure what that would look like, brown maybe?), red or orange. Blue would likely be hard to tell from Green without good light so that would not be a good idea. But red and orange are both very good choices. Changing the color will fix the problem on both the standard and the "printer optimized" page. Why just fix only one version? Do I *have* to use the printer optimized page for printing??? I like the standard page. I just want the color of the difficulty marker changed on *both* pages. Link to comment
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