CSS to set A4 paper size

Question

I need simulate an A4 paper in web and allow to print this page as it is show on browser (Chrome, specifically). I set the element size to 21cm x 29.7cm, but when I send to print (or print preview) it clip my page.

See this Live example!

body {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  background-color: #FAFAFA;
  font: 12pt "Tahoma";
}

* {
  box-sizing: border-box;
  -moz-box-sizing: border-box;
}

.page {
  width: 21cm;
  min-height: 29.7cm;
  padding: 2cm;
  margin: 1cm auto;
  border: 1px #D3D3D3 solid;
  border-radius: 5px;
  background: white;
  box-shadow: 0 0 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);
}

.subpage {
  padding: 1cm;
  border: 5px red solid;
  height: 256mm;
  outline: 2cm #FFEAEA solid;
}

@page {
  size: A4;
  margin: 0;
}

@media print {
  .page {
    margin: 0;
    border: initial;
    border-radius: initial;
    width: initial;
    min-height: initial;
    box-shadow: initial;
    background: initial;
    page-break-after: always;
  }
}

<div class="book">
  <div class="page">
    <div class="subpage">Page 1/2</div>
  </div>
  <div class="page">
    <div class="subpage">Page 2/2</div>
  </div>
</div>

I think I'm forgetting something. But what would it be?

• Chrome: clipping page, double page (it's just what I need it to work)
• Firefox: it works perfectly.
• IE10: believe it or not, it's perfect!
• Opera: very buggy on print preview

Solution 1

I looked into this a bit more and the actual problem seems to be with assigning initial to page width under the print media rule. It seems like in Chrome width: initial on the .page element results in scaling of the page content if no specific length value is defined for width on any of the parent elements (width: initial in this case resolves to width: auto ... but actually any value smaller than the size defined under the @page rule causes the same issue).

So not only the content is now too long for the page (by about 2cm), but also the page padding will be slightly more than the initial 2cm and so on (it seems to render the contents under width: auto to the width of ~196mm and then scale the whole content up to the width of 210mm ~ but strangely exactly the same scaling factor is applied to contents with any width smaller than 210mm).

To fix this problem you can simply in the print media rule assign the A4 paper width and hight to html, body or directly to .page and in this case avoid the initial keyword.

DEMO

@page {
  size: A4;
  margin: 0;
}
@media print {
  html, body {
    width: 210mm;
    height: 297mm;
  }
  /* ... the rest of the rules ... */
}

^{This seems to keep everything else the way it is in your original CSS and fix the problem in Chrome (tested in different versions of Chrome under Windows, OS X and Ubuntu).}

Solution 2

CSS

body {
  background: rgb(204,204,204); 
}
page[size="A4"] {
  background: white;
  width: 21cm;
  height: 29.7cm;
  display: block;
  margin: 0 auto;
  margin-bottom: 0.5cm;
  box-shadow: 0 0 0.5cm rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
}
@media print {
  body, page[size="A4"] {
    margin: 0;
    box-shadow: 0;
  }
}

HTML

<page size="A4"></page>
<page size="A4"></page>
<page size="A4"></page>

DEMO

Solution 3

https://github.com/cognitom/paper-css seems to solve all my needs.

Paper CSS for happy printing

Front-end printing solution - previewable and live-reloadable!

Comments

[unom]

The correct answer is here: stackoverflow.com/a/34018790/293856

[Mark Boulder]

Possible dupe of: stackoverflow.com/questions/3341485/…

[Eugen Konkov]

bug report about this

[caw]

How did you arrive at the 256mm (and thus 237mm, eventually) for the .subpage element?

[Martin Turjak]

@MarcoW. I believe the OP's 256mm is slightly rounded down A4 paper height without the page padding: 297mm - 2*20mm ... maybe 257mm would be a bit more obvious ;-) And in my previous example the 237mm accounted for the ~2cm "too long" content ... but only superficially solved the problem. See my updated answer above for the actual solution.

[Ben]

Hey @MartinTurjak, i tweaked your fiddle to a US Letter version, in case anyone's interested. jsfiddle.net/2wk6Q/2957 Cheers!

[Vikram]

I am having 4 fields in printing a page how to partition the equal size of all the fields.. what is the size of the print page in pxl

[Brad]

i was generating an 8 page document and the 257mm height on the .subpage was creating a blank page at the end. fiddling around with it resulted in 256.85mm being the golden number.

[Seiyria]

Never would have guessed that this was the problem. Thanks!

[Sebastian Farham]

@Brad: didn't work for me. Still creating a blank page in between each page.

[Martin Schneider]

side note: <page> is not a valid custom HTML element name

[1owk3y]

Worked perfectly in my application.That JSFiddle is nice by the way - the print preview looked so clean I nearly fell out of my chair.

[nights]

Nope, this doesnt work. Example print is only have the size and doesnt fill out the paper

[Matias Kinnunen]

Seems to work. But box-shadow: 0; doesn't work (at least in Chrome), it should be box-shadow: none;. The two margin declarations can also be combined into margin: 0 auto 0.5cm;.

[Thanasis]

For the blank print pages problem, just remove all the .page { } class below the @media print { } and it will get sorted. That class is totally unnecessary

[Thanasis]

I made mistake above. You can't really delete that. Just change min-height: 297mm into max-height: 296mm; in the .page class. This will sort the double page issue.

[Safi Nettah]

For me 297.129mm is the real height of an A4 format, 297mm with 70 pages I have a little space at the end of the document

[Yous0147]

Beautiful! Thank you so much, this was a life saver!

[Matthew Herbst]

This (at least, the fiddle example) no longer appears to work on Chrome 92 (MacOS 11.4). I see white margins on both sides of the print area :(