Lesson 12: Administering Printers Using a Web Browser

Windows 2000 enables you to manage printers from any computer running a Web browser, regardless of whether the computer is running Windows 2000 or has the correct printer driver installed. You can perform the same management tasks using a Web browser as you do by using Windows 2000 management tools. The difference in administering with a Web browser is the interface, which is a Web-based interface. To gain access to a printer by using a Web browser, the print server on which the printer resides must have Internet Information Server (IIS) installed.

---

After this lesson, you will be able to

• Describe the advantages of administering printers using a Web browser
• Describe how to administer printers using a Web browser

Estimated lesson time: 5 minutes

---

Understanding Web Servers

A Web server is a computer that responds to requests from a user's browser. Shortcuts or links to a resource on a Web server from a user's computer are known as Web folders or HTTP folders. For a Web server to provide Web folders, the Web server must support one of the following protocols or extensions: the Web Extension Client (WEC) protocol, FrontPage extensions, or the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol and IIS.

Using a Web Browser to Manage Printers

The following are the advantages of using a Web browser to manage printers:

• It allows you to administer printers from any computer running a Web browser, regardless of whether the computer is running Windows 2000 or has the correct printer driver installed.
• It allows you to customize the interface. For example, you can create your own Web page containing a floor plan with the locations of the printers and the links to the printers.
• It provides a summary page listing the status of all printers on a print server.
• It can report real-time print device data, such as whether the print device is in power-saving mode, if the printer driver makes such information available. This information isn't available from the Printers window.

Accessing Printers Using a Web Browser

If you want to gain access to all printers on a print server by using a Web browser, open the Web browser, and then in the Address box, type

 http://print_server_name/printers 

If you want to gain access to a specific printer by using a Web browser, open the Web browser, and then in the Address box, type

 http://server_name/printer_share_name 

Lesson Summary

This lesson showed you one benefit of using a Web browser to administer printers: it allows you to administer printers from any computer running a Web browser, regardless of whether the computer is running Windows 2000 or has the correct printer driver installed.