watermarking web pages.

Anon

right now for our company org chart, the CEO requires that i put the employee id of the person printing the page as a repeating watermark on the org chart.

i can do it just fine with DHTML and PHP... but then when they print it, the employee id number prints as huge text and covers up the org chart. so the user is then told to check the "print background colors and images" in internet options in IE, and then everything prints right. this has been in production for a few months and works fine, but the tech support calls are pissing me off.

I would MUCH RATHER just create an IMAGE of the employee id, and tile that in the background, but then i would have to find a way to FORCE them to have the background images checkbox checked.

Does anyone have a good suggestion at a dynamic printable watermark just containing an employee ID number?

thanks!

PS... for those curious types, the CEO thinks someone will print out the org chart, sell it to recruiters, and then somehow our lawyers will get it back, and we can look at the number and figure out who sold it. BUT this is the only page he wants it on, and all the information is available elsewhere on the intranet with no watermark! (such as who reports to who, and what skills you have) anyways, i can't win this battle, so i have to do it.

Anon

This sounds like a javascript question but I'm not sure if you can even do it with that. Using a watermark (background image) sounds like a mistake to me.

I once had to deal with a similar situation, but management finally gave up on the idea. Is the org chart an image or HTML? If an image, perhaps you can use the image library (can't think of the name of it) to edit the image. If it's HTML, perhaps you can plaster the employee number all over the page. Something like "this page was viewed by employee 123456".

Good luck dealing with idiocy.

Anon

You can't force print backgrounds to be printed 🙁

If you use IE 5.5 or above at your work, you can always use DHTML to position the watermark with the opacity set to like, 30% or something.

If not, you could output everything into a png image and embed the watermark that way, or output as a .pdf (using the apropriate extensions...). good luck

Ghak

Anon

Put the org chart in PDF format. Create a read-only field on the document that will contain the employee id. (You could also add several copies of the same field so the id is displayed in numerous places in the document) Put that on your web server.

Use PHP to create the FDF data that will populate the read-only field(s) with the employee id and link to the PDF file. The PDF org chart is displayed and the user can't change the id field(s).

There are still ways around this, but it should superficially satisfy your technically superficial CEO.

Hank

Anon

they org chart itself is dynamic based on the employee data as well... and it is entirely HTML based.

right now I use DHTML to make a z-index behind the main table and clobber the employee id all over it repeating in huge letters with low opacity. the printers ignore this opacity when printing unless you say to print background colors and images...

making the whole thing PDF would be great, but it would be extremely hard...

and the REAL problem is they think the employee will PRINT the item and mail it to someone... a pdf id or whatever could be cut off the document. if they emailed it, of course this would work because the file couldn't be changed.

Anon

So technically there is no solution to what the CEO really wants except to keep the org chart secret or don't worry about it. A solution to what he thinks he wants will only satisfy him until someone shows him the solution doesn't work. Lather, rinse, and repeat as necessary until the org chart becomes secret or a nonissue. Regardless, I don't envy your position. Good luck.

Hank