Creating an Alternate Print View, Calling an alternate Template

I’m wondering if it’s possible to assign an alternate template to a page by posting a variable to the URL. For example, in Xaraya, I can create a link as follows: http://www.afterall.net/books/490886?theme=print. "?theme=print" tells Xaraya to override the default template with a print view template. I’m trying to do this for two reasons: 1) Sometimes people like to read an article unadorned, 2) Even though my CSS stylesheet for "media=print" includes "display:none" for a number of elements that I want to hide in the print view, Mozilla and Safari both print those elements anyway.

I can achieve an alternate view on the screen by using the included styleswitcher.js, but printing still displays the elements I’ve hidden in the stylesheet. So, I’m wondering if I could actually have an alternate template for printing within modx, and force a page to use that template through the URL or some other manner. I’m trying to accomplish this at: http://agape.ie/move/campus/go/smallgroups. Click on "PrintView" to sample my attempts via the styleswitcher. (Caveat: this link is to a Christian website.)

I think the biggest problem is that you declare the same CSS file for both print and screen:


Most likely, you need to remove the middle declaration and change the last one to media="print" as follows:

You’re right, rthrash. I feel silly for having missed those typos. Now that I’ve fixed them, printing is functioning correctly. I’m still curious if you can force a page to use an alternate template since I can imagine other uses for it, but there’s no urgency now.

I did leave the middle declaration in because it’s apparently necessary for the document to display correctly on screen using the styleswitcher.

Thanks much, rthrash.

You could then do this and not have two server requests:



A plugin could handle your other request, though the details around which I have no clue how to implement successfully.