Firefox is generating large sized printing files and prints slowly
Printing with FF 4.0 is slow and generated print files are huge
I tried the RC and released versions of Firefox 4.0 and found the printer module(?) doesn't work as it did in version 3.x
If I print to my laser printer it generates each page slowly (I'm guessing it turns it into graphics) or if I print to a PDF file instead of being a few hundred kilobytes in size, the files are megabytes long.
Is there a way to make Firefox 4 print the way 3.x pronted? I downgraded to 3.6.16 and the problem went away. Other browsers also print normally.
I'm on Windows 7 SP1 64-bit.
All Replies (5)
Seriously, I love Firefox - LONG time user, but FF 4.0 is just horrible for printing. It takes forever to print web pages.
Can we get some kind of official response on this? Unless a fix is due soon I'm going back to 3.6 for now.
A couple of things I've found since the original post. I decided to try out version 4.01 and the printing is still and issue. I'm getting around it at the moment by a combination of using IE or the IE Tab add-on. I'd be much happier just printing normally.
I did discover that starting FF in SAFE mode, things print normally again. I disabled all the add-ons and extensions, but then still had the problem. So I'm not sure what else safe mode turns off, but it fixes the issue.
I've also been trying out the nightly builds of the 64-bit version currenly 6.0a1 I believe is the version number. Printing works just fine with it, but alas not all my add-ons yet.
This is obviously fixable, and not broken in the nightly builds, I hope by 4.02 its a dead bug.
I am having the same problem with FF 4.01. I have two computers, both newer Dell laptops with Win 7 pro. Both have the same printer drivers installed, including Cute PDF which in particular is what I'm having the problem with. One computer prints to Cute PDF perfectly fine, giving a reasonably small file as a result (e.g. this page here is 187kb as a PDF). The other computer produces enormous files (this same page is 1.1mb!!!). Both computers have all the latest Windows updates. On the computer which is producing the large PDFs, I tried numerous other PDF printing programs including Adobe Acrobat 9. All of them produce large files. This only happens in FF - IE and Chrome produce reasonably-sized files. (Chrome, incidentally, has the smallest file size!)
I love FF but I produce a lot of PDFs of a custom web application, and I can't do them in FF any more. *cough*Chromeworksbetterforthis*cough*
If I find a solution, I'll post it here.
I just upgraded to FF 5.0 The problem of large sized PDF file is fixed. However the problem of slow printing is still here. (I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1)
Modified by solstice
Firefox 5.0 fixed the problem for me as well. Broke some plugins until they get updated, but nothing I can't handle.
I found the printing to be faster or at least similar speed to 3.6 was.