TUAW Tip: Auto-quit Printers in Leopard

Well I dont know why you'd want to close the printer queue. It makes it so much easier than opening an application to just drop a document on it in the doc to print. Much faster than waiting for the app to open....plenty of room in the dock for everybody....

This was useful. I have this other issue though: a printer is connected to another mac (running tiger) with "printer share" on. When I am on the same network with that mac (and I am using leopard on macbook pro), I can add that printer to my list of printers and print on it. If I take my macbook pro elsewhere, this printer disappears. I have to add it back when I go back to that network. This is very annoying. Anyone knows what the problem might be?

Ugh! Thank you SO MUCH! This annoyed the hell out of me, and I'll be more than a little glad to fix this. Cross one more little annoyance from the upgrade off the list. I'm still pleased with 10.5 over Tiger on the whole though.

That printer thing was annoying, thanks for the helpful tip!

the way printing works on leopard is a million times better.
i print stuff continually at work, and the whole way it works is much more efficient. so what if there are a few bugs with the application quitting, it's nothing to cry for 10.5.1 over.

IIRC, Tiger used to leave the app opened if it the window was activated. Otherwise, it would auto quit.


Speaking of printer, how do change their icons? They are the most horrible piece of UI and changing their ICNS resource doesn't work. Is there something to do?

I miss the old, generic printer app that would animate to show printed pages...

Thanks for pointing out this simple, but useful tip. I totally missed that option and have been annoyed by the printers staying open. I think we're finding (or at least I'm finding) that many of the things I first thought were annoyances in Leopard can be remedied and actually allow more customization (when they work).

Why don't printers auto-quit by default? Probably because you can adjust the auto-quit setting only when the icon is present. In Leopard, the stay-open behavior is new; it's a feature to some, an annoyance to others, and probably unnoticed by many. It's easier for the annoyed group to explore a static, non-disappearing icon and discover how to make it auto-quit, than it is for the feature-hungry group to explore a quickly disappearing icon to discover how to turn off an auto-quit setting. It's not the number of people demanding the new behavior, but an attempt to make this setting easier to find.

Yay. THis was one of those features that annoy me, little open printers on my dock (I have four of them)

Thanks for the tip

hmm. it just worked.

seems it's intermittent, then - or some other factor i'm ignoring?