Print styles: How to ensure image doesn't span a page break

css image printing print-style

41,921

The only means I can think of is to use one (or potentially more) of the following css rules:

img {
    page-break-before: auto; /* 'always,' 'avoid,' 'left,' 'inherit,' or 'right' */
    page-break-after: auto; /* 'always,' 'avoid,' 'left,' 'inherit,' or 'right' */
    page-break-inside: avoid; /* or 'auto' */
}

I half-recall that these declarations only apply to block-level elements (so you'd also have to define display: block; on your image, or use some kind of wrapping container and apply the rules to that (whether it's in a paragraph, div, span, list, etc...).

Some useful discussion here: "What are most usefule media="print" specific, cross-browser compatible CSS properties?"

References:

41,921

davidtbernal

Hello!

Updated on July 08, 2022

Comments

davidtbernal almost 2 years
When writing a print stylesheet, is there a way to ensure that an image is always only on a single page, instead of spanning multiple pages. The images much smaller than the page, but based on the document flow, they end up at the bottom of the page and get split. An example of the behavior I'm seeing is below:
```
Page 1 |                    |
       |  (text text text)  |
       |  (text text text)  |
       |  ________________  |
       | | Top of image   | |
       |____________________|
       ------page break------
        ____________________
Page 2 | | Rest of image  | |
       | |________________| |
       |         …          |
```
What I'd like
```
Page 1 |                    |
       |  (text text text)  |
       |  (text text text)  |
       |                    |
       |                    |
       |____________________|
       ------page break------
        ____________________
Page 2 |  ________________  |
       | | Full image     | |
       | |                | |
       | |________________| |
       |         …          |
```
All those times I complained about floats in LaTeX, and here I am asking for the same functionality... Can this be done? I'm not necessarily concerned about it working in all browsers, since this is often just a one-off document I'm writing to be turned into a PDF.
- NickG over 9 years
  
  Upvote for great use of ASCII art diagrams :)
- Admin about 9 years
  
  @NickG Much agreed, really awesome ASCII diagram!
davidtbernal about 14 years

Yup, this works. (page-break-inside:avoid). Now I'm reminded of why LaTeX floats are a pain.
Mindwin over 8 years

@notJim only the floats?
Wolf about 7 years

The explanation is very logical, but for some reason it doesn't work for my HTML5 file with Firefox 54. Maybe just a bug, since it works with Internet Explorer 11...
Wolf about 7 years

page-break-inside - CSS | MDN is a page dedicated to this flaw ;)
The Oddler almost 7 years

@Wolf Did that page change? Or am I missing something? Why doesn't this work in HTML5 with FF54?
Wolf almost 7 years

@TheOddler Why doesn't this work in HTML5 with FF54 -- I couldn't believe this either
The Oddler almost 7 years

@Wolf Very weird yea. I have since tried it on Safara and there it works fine. So I guess I'll have to whip out my mac to print pages :P
BallpointBen about 2 years

These are deprecated in favor of break-after, break-before, break-inside.