Printing from browser help

I am helping out with a University campus navigation system built on top of OSM ( http://seamster.cs.umd.edu:8090/map/index.html ) and we are having some trouble printing from the browser. What ends up happening is that the top layer (what is superimposed on the OSM map) gets printed, but not the actual OSM map. Actually, the behavior varies from browser to browser (it prints all of the top layer in Firefox 2, but Firefox 3 prints part of the top layer and part of the background layer). The print preview is inconsistent in what it shows.

I noticed that on OSM’s main map (not ours), when I try to print, it does print, but the printout is shifted slightly up and to the right of the focus of the map as seen in the browser.
EDIT: This may just be because of shrink to page issues? Though I do notice that the print preview sometimes fizzles out on the main OSM also.

Any ideas on where to begin to work on this and/or how the actual OSM map handles it?

Ideally the solution would be to get it to print in-browser, but maybe some other kind of solution (like using something additional like osmosis or something) is necessary?

Thanks much for your time and assistance.

-Jeff James

I have no idea how to solve your problem but.

  1. try http://openlayers.org they might have a good idea if this can be done.
  2. ask on the mailing lists

Thanks! I’ll get in contact with the people over at openlayers.