IE 8 and Dot Matrix issue

Recent upgrades to IE8 now cause issues when we print "basic" (text only)
HTML pages to a Oki320 dot matrix printer. More specifically, when you print
from an IE8 browser to the printer, the text is large and squished together.
We have uninstalled IE8 and reinstalled IE7 and it works just fine - just as
it did before. We've turned the printer off and back on, reinstalled drivers,
tried different drivers, changed settings in IE,etc. and nothing seems to fix
the problem. NOTE: printing from Word or Notepad to the printer works just
fine. It's only if you print from IE8 to the printer does it give you the
malformed text.

any thoughts/suggestions sure would be greatly appreciated.

 

If you're satisfied with that then try using the Accessibility dialog
to allow you to pick your font and font size. E.g. Alt-T,O,Alt-e,s and z

Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---

 

good info.. I tried that, however, it resulted in the same output. Odd how if
you use the same driver/setup in IE7, it works just fine. Whatever IE8
added/changed within their print routine has really things up. (as it relates
to a dot matrix printer)

 

David,
The problem is not just with the Okidata but with all dot matrix printers.
This is a serious IE8 bug and i hope MS fixes this. We had to "downgrade" to
IE7 as well as have all of our clients dowgrade in order to print multipart
forms.

Many government and financial institutions require multipart forms that must
be filled out with impact printers.

Is there another place to report this bug to MS?

 

Good to hear I'm not the only one with this issue. I was on the phone with
IE8 support for 5 hours on Friday, until the MS support tech connected to my
PC, tweaked the registry and subsequently caused my PC to hang... and was
unable to revive the pc.... After reloading my PC, I'm going to try again
with them this week and will post any new findings,etc...

 

Good luck and thanks for blazing the trail. Have you tried any other
browsers? My ASP.net app doesn't run well enough on firefox for me to try. If
MS doesn't fix this i may have to rework my app to run on a different browser.

 

Our web application was pretty much designed to run with IE only. I've tried
printing a test page using Firefox, but no dice. The spacing and font size is
off... As a result, any contracts or documents would have alignment
issues,etc...

FYI, here's what our print output looks like:
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/7426/ie8printissue.jpg

It's amazing how MS can break things!

 

Output looks just like mine. (I am also using scriptx). Looks the same on an
Epson FX890. I have tried may drivers all with the same distorted output.

What does yor app do?

 

Our application was designed for the auto industry. Most of the associated
paperwork can be printed to laser (plain paper), however, a number of finance
companies/banks require a dot matrix version.

 

Just got off the phone with MS support and they have now acknowledged this as
an actual issue. Unfortunately, they are unable to provide any clarity on
when and if it will ever be fixed.... They said once enough people have
submitted similar issues, then they may release a patch/fix....

 

Why would you want IE8?

 

Exactly. If we had our ways, we'd stay on IE7 because IT WORKS, however, we
really have no control over our subscription based client base and b/c MS
slips in the IE8 upgrade in their Automatic Update process, most dealers
install it unknowningly. We then have to spend time with them to uninstall
IE8 - time waste.

 

Well said, David. Forcing our customers to remain on IE7 is only a short term
fix.