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Lesson 4: 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. All management tasks that you perform with Windows 2000 management tools are the same when you use a Web browser. 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 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.

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.