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About eBird

Printing eBird bar charts

Unfortunately, printing the eBird bar charts, like this one for the Farallon Islands, California (a great vagrant location, with an overall list of over 400 species!) isn't as easy as we would like.

To generate these bar charts we create something that a lot of browsers call background images. The default for many browsers is to not to print these. If you try to print our bar charts, you won't see the green bars.

Exactly how you correct this depends upon your browser. Generally, you want to look for something called "Print Background Images" and make sure that is turned on. This is typically within the page set up for printing. Here are some specific instructions for the most popular browsers:

  • Windows-Firefox 3.0: Under File … Page Setup on the “Format & Options” tab, check the “Print Background Colors and Images” checkbox.
  • Windows-Internet Explorer 7.0: Under Tools, select "Internet Options". On the “Advanced” tab, about 2/3 of the way down the scroll window, check the “Print background colors and images” checkbox under the heading for “Printing”. Printing under Internet Explorer will print a blank page following every print job sent to your printer. This is an IE issue only and cannot be remedied with any browser setting. If you tire of collecting blank sheets of paper to run back through your printer, we suggest moving to the Windows version of Firefox 3.0, at least for printing. Installing a second browser on your PC will not affect other applications with which you use Internet Explorer, but you may like using Firefox so much more than IE that you decide to dump it!
  • Mac-Firefox 3.0: Check the boxes for “Print Background Colors” and “Print Background Images”. These are located in the Firefox options on the print window. This is the last window to appear before your pages are sent to the printer.
  • Mac-Safari. With the bar chart page open, choose File > Print.
    Choose Safari from the print dialog's pull-down menu that defaults to "Copies & Pages." Select the checkbox labeled "Print backgrounds." In other version of Safari, you will need to hit the little down arrow that appears to the right of the name of your printer. This will open up a window that allows you to "print backgrounds".
  • Other browsers. If you do not see your browser listed here, do an internet search for the name of the browser and "print background images" or "print backgrounds". Or contact the technical support for your browser and say that you want to print background images.