How do I print with the screen stylesheet?

Question

A number of websites that I use have really bad stylesheets for the print media, but their screen stylesheets are quite good.

Is there any way to tell my browser to ignore the print stylesheet and just print with the screen stylesheet?

I’d also like to do this when I want to show clients the difference between the two.

Answer 1

Using Chrome Developer Tools (Ctrl+Shift+I) is the only thing I have found that works.

1. Search for all instances of media="screen" and delete that attribute.
2. Then search for media="print" and delete that whole link.
3. Then try printing.

This generally gives me the page with screen styling.

If you really just want to disable print styles, you can install the Web Developer extension (I think there is a version for Firefox and Chrome). It has a button to disable print styles. However, it does not extend the "screen" style to print, so most of the time it does not work the way you hope it will.

Answer 2

Following James idea but using jQuery:

$('*[media="screen"],*[media="print"]').attr('media', '')

If page doesn't have jQuery, inject it:

var el = document.createElement('script'); el.type = "text/javascript"; el.src = "http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.pack.js"; document.body.appendChild(el);

Answer 3

There is a new method to directly choose the media emulation in Developer Tools, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9540990/using-chromes-element-inspector-in-print-preview-mode/

Answer 4

I Found an easy way to do it in Chrome.

Open Developer Tool > Rendering > Select 'screen' in Emulate CSS media.

Now try to print. It will pick the screen CSS instead of Print CSS.

Answer 5

Leo had a good idea there, but it doesn't quite do what James said: it should be

$('*[media="screen"]').attr('media', '');$('*[media="print"]').remove();

Hint: save the following as a bookmarklet for easy use:

javascript:var%20el=document.createElement('script');el.type="text/javascript";el.src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.pack.js";document.body.appendChild(el);setTimeout(function(){$('*[media="screen"]').attr('media','');$('*[media="print"]').remove();},%202000)

This preloads jQuery and waits 2secs for it to finish, but if this wait isn't enough, just run it again, jQuery should have been loaded in the meantime.

Answer 6

1. Do anything James said ;)

   You can check the output opening the Chrome Developer Tools settings (right bottom corner) and select in "Overrides" the option "Emulate CSS media print"-view. By toggling this option you can compare print and screen view. Have fun!

2. Install this addon: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/print-background-colors/gjecpgdgnlanljjdacjdeadjkocnnamk

Now background-images and colors are printed as well.

Bug: Doesn't work with CSS sprites.

EDIT: Chrome has changed the print view in 2014 I think so you do not need to use the linked addon anymore.

Answer 7

I just ran into this problem with a website that had a single CSS file using @media print and @media screen, so the solution to disable the separate print CSS file didn't work for me. While I could certainly edit the CSS and comment out the print block while viewing the page, those changes didn't carry over to the print preview.

The solution I found was the Print Edit extension for Firefox and Chrome. It lets you edit the page immediately before printing, and includes a simple button to use the Web Style (@media screen) for the page.

I did have to change the scale I was printing at slightly, since the print surface is roughly a 17:22 ratio while my browser is roughly 16:9, so some of the stuff on the page was getting a bit crowded horizontally. I also had to enable printing the background colors & images separately

Answer 8

Sometimes web sites use CSS to specify that different styles should be used on-screen and when printing. This is often good, but it can also be confusing and problematic. Inspect the source code of the page and look for something like:

@media print {
  *:after {
    color: #000 !important;
    background: transparent !important;
  }

One reason this problem is common is that web sites using the popular Bootstrap framework use the ubiquitous bootstrap.min.css file, which contains the CSS style above.

The key thing to look for is @media print. Web sites often have complex structures and it may help to save the page locally and inspect it with a recursive text-searching tool.

When you think you've found the spot in the CSS code, you can modify the page directly in your browser by using its developer features. (In Chrome you press Ctrl+ Shift + I to launch them.)

Search for the CSS code and just remove or invalidate the rows causing the problem. Verify that the operation worked by using "Print preview".

Answer 9

Install Greasemonkey addon and use the script given below.

I modified a script I found here http://www.netsi.dk/wordpress/index.php/2011/07/07/printing-html-pages-make-screen-and-print-appear-the-same/

I changed "screen" to "print" at the end (I have no idea about jQuery, so don't ask me any questions) so that in effect it sends the screen version to the printer. When printing to pdf, (using Foxit or Nitro Pdf printers), I set the page type to Tabloid Extra in landscape mode so the pdf size matches the screen size more or less. Enjoy! Remember, I don't know a thing about programming, so the credit goes to the original author.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Show print version (A Cross Browser Example) (showPrintVersion.user.js)
// @namespace    netsi
// @match http://*/*
// @author       Sten Hougaard
// @description  Simply add #print to the URL. As descriped in my blog post (goo.gl/MEizV) this will activate any media=print stylesheets so that you can see the print version without printing
// ==/UserScript==

// a function that loads jQuery and calls a callback function when jQuery has finished loading
function addJQuery(callback) {
  var script = document.createElement("script");
  script.setAttribute("src", "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.3/jquery.min.js");
  script.addEventListener('load', function () {
    var script = document.createElement("script");
    script.textContent = "(" + callback.toString() + ")();";
    document.body.appendChild(script);
  }, false);
  document.body.appendChild(script);
}

// the guts of this userscript
function main() {
  var bPrint = (window.location.toString().indexOf('#print')!=-1);  
  if (bPrint) {
    // The user wants to print this page
    jQuery('link[media*="screen"]').attr('media', 'all'); // Enable the screen styling for all media types, including screen.
    jQuery('link[media*="print"]').remove(); // remove any styling related to print
  }
}

// load jQuery and execute the main function
addJQuery(main);

Answer 10

Similar to James - use "Sources" tab in Chrome Developer tools, and replace all instances of media print with media speech. Thus all the css changes to hide navbars etc will not be applied when printing (but will be applied when text-to-speech is used)

This may be doable with JQuery as above.

This is useful as I am using the CDN of css so customisation is right out

Answer 11

Try to enable "Print background (colors & images)" option in Page Setup and check how it looks in Print Preview (It's for FF).

Answer 12

There is a great tool for that on Mac.

Install Paparazzi => copy URL to Paparazzi => Save image as => PDF

(in PDF exports, even the Text ist selectable, it's not just an "image")

https://derailer.org/paparazzi/screenshots

enjoy :-)