Internet Explorer Printing – Shrink to fit

Ok this post will be a little more Internet Explorer 7 focused but I thought it would be valuable to share.

So many times when I am attempting to print content off a webpage I find that the "Shrink To Fit” feature leaves a bit to be desired. I am starting out by opening http://msdn.microsoft.com as I would expect this page to render perfectly in IE and indeed it does.

  Now by simply clicking on File – Print – Preview we will see a new rendering of the page which appears to look very different than the page I was just looking at. At first glance you might think hey all the content is there and it doesn’t look that bad.

But it’s when you compare this page to the same page in Firefox you see the difference.

Firefox actually even rendered the Ads and the layout looks more like the original page than the IE 7 rendering. The problem isn’t Shrink To Fit but more about how Internet Explorer is designed to print preview.

So what are your options?  At this point I am not sure but I am posting this out there to see if anyone has found a good add-in that will scale the page down and still look nice. Post away on the comments.