How to connect to a WLAN printer?

Question

My printer (Canon PIXMA 5250) has USB & WLAN interfaces. It works well via direct USB connection from my desktop pc, and also from a Windows laptop that connects via WLAN. I would like to switch this laptop to Ubuntu but I don't see how I can make Ubuntu connect to the wireless printer?

This is my wife's laptop. Seeing how easilyl it works in Windows, I can't ask her to connect a wire to print from Ubuntu. FWIW, in Windows the option "add printer" automatically discovers the printer on the WLAN and successfully installs drivers for it. I don't know whether such user-friendly functionality exists in Ubuntu but I am hoping that is the case -- I just haven't found this anywhere?

I've tried (a year ago) to set up Ubuntu on her laptop, and I had the printer set up using samba and/or CUPS and it was pretty difficult to set up, and the printed result was not the expected WYSIWYG.

This similar question has an answer indicating that the "add printer" dialog can "find" the printer, but when I try that, I get the message No printer was found at that address. Apparently I must enter a host but what could that be?

So how can I "find" a wireless printer?

Solution

Forget that its wireless for the moment, to any computer its just a printer on the network as such it should have an IP address (host address), you may be able to find it by using an ipscanner or it maybe you can drive the menu on the device itself to reveal its IP address. Enter the IP address into the host field.

Comments

[squareborg]

Forget that its wireless for the moment, to any computer its just a printer on the network as such it should have an IP address (host address), you may be able to find it by using an ipscanner or it maybe you can drive the menu on the device itself to reveal its IP address. PS Doesn't it show the printer as found at the top of the dialog you shown? or is that its USB interface?

[ebed]

At the top, it shows the USB interface. This screenshot was just for the purpose of illustration; I want to do the same on the laptop where the printer is not yet known at all. Indeed, looking though the printer's own menu I found its IP address and entered that as HOST in Ubuntu. That seemed to have worked. If you post your comment as an answer, I can accept it.

[squareborg]

Okay glad its working.