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Test Printing

A useful free utility to help with testing your printouts without wasting paper is PDF Creator. Once installed it acts as a printer driver - you print to PDF Creator instead of your normal printer and it will create a PDF file of the output instead. Suitable readers for PDF files are Adobe Reader and Foxit. HELPRIGHT: To get the most out of the site you need your own personal ID. If you are a single subscriber you will already have this. If you are a student at school or college, then you should log on using the school ID and then create your own personal log-on details.

You will then be able to access the forum, conferencing and on-line assessment.

How do I create and print an exam paper?

Currently, the site contains 2907 interactive exam questions based on examination papers from many different exam boards. You can print out your own selection from them together with a mark scheme. For successful printing you will need to ensure your browser and printer are suitably set-up. There is a help page providing further help and advice on printing.

  • Select a module.
  • Clink the link near the top of the page: .
  • Choose which questions you require. A display will show you how many questions you have selected, their total worth in marks and the total time you should spend on them.
  • Click Print Exam Paper.
  • Now you can print directly, or, if you have PDFCreator or similar software, you can print to a pdf file.
Note that the quality of your final print-out may depend on your specific combination of browser, operating system and printer. You should print the exam papers with your page orientation set to portrait and we recommend that headers and footers are turned off to produce less cluttered prints.

Web Browsers

The following web browsers have been tested with this facility and produce usable output:
  • Firefox
  • Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) - but see below for the small font problem
  • Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) - in IE7 compatibility mode
  • Internet Explorer 9
  • Internet Explorer 10
  • Chrome
We will be updating this information as problems are resolved or as web browsers improve. If you find that pagination is not correct on printouts then try adjusting the Page Size setting on the Print Exam Paper size. Also, make sure your printer has been set to print at 100%. See below for more information on these two.

Opera

The Opera web browser does not produce legible printouts of the jsMath created text even though the initial display looks fine.

IE7 Small Font problem

There are two solutions to this. The first needs to be done before every print. The second is a permanent fix:
  1. When the Print dialog box appears, click Cancel and then right-click on the Print Exam Paper page. Select the Print Preview option and change the option that says Shrink to Fit to the 100% option. Now click the Print button (the one on the far left at the top) and the print should now be a more reasonable size.
  2. Use the "fix" suggested at wizardev.ca/web-words/fix-for-ie7s-shrink-to-fit-printing-option. Note that this will permanently change the default setting to "100%". Please be warned that this fix will change your computer's registry - altering the registry without knowing what you are doing can damage your Windows installation and may require a complete reinstallation of Windows. MathsNet A-Level Plus cannot be held responsible for any damage you do to your own computer!

jsMath Fonts

Many of the questions use the jsMath applet. This requires special fonts to be installed for successful printing. In some cases you may find that questions and answers are not printed at all until you install these fonts.
The fonts can be downloaded from www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/ Use the Download the TeX fonts option.
Full instructions for their installation can be found at pubpages.unh.edu/~jsh3/jsMath/

Page Size/Pagination problems

If you find that the pagination is not correct on your prints then check the following have been set correctly:
  • You have selected the correct paper size for your printer on the Exam Page - there are currently two options: A4 (the default) and Letter.
  • That the printer your web browser is using is set for the correct paper size. To change this use the Print option from the File menu (on Windows) and choose the properties and/or the advanced button.
  • That you are printing in Portrait orientation.
  • We recommend that you remove any default Headers and Footers that your web browser may add to the page and, if necessary, adjust the height of any margins. These are usually set in Page Setup option (which is usually in the File menu).