# Printing webpages WYSIWYG **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 14, 2013, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-webpages-wysiwyg/676325 "2013-12-14T20:49:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2013, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-webpages-wysiwyg/676325/1 "2013-12-14T20:49:37Z")
Lately I’ve been noticing that webpages aren’t printing out like they appear on screen, instead they seem to be accessing some secret print version of the pages with just a single column of printer friendly text. This is happening to me in Safari in OSX, but I tried Chrome and it does it there too. This wouldn’t be as much a problem for me except that it also affects the print to PDF function, because otherwise I would take a window screenshot, but that saves as an image rather than as postscript. Googling around, it seems to be related to pages having a separate CSS for printing. But I can’t seem to find a way to make that optional rather than mandatory. Any ideas? ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2013, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-webpages-wysiwyg/676325/2 "2013-12-14T21:37:24Z")
Can you save these pages as either (in Chromium anyway) a complete webpage or an html file, and then load and print the saved page? Maybe with some editing before loading the saved page to clean it up? ---
**Author:** ![Space\_Vegetable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Space\_Vegetable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Space_Vegetable)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2013, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-webpages-wysiwyg/676325/3 "2013-12-14T22:12:23Z")
[This page](http://gcallsen.com/blog/2011/02/04/disable-print-stylesheets-css-when-printing-a-website/) offers a solution using the Web Developer extension. In Firefox, after installing the extension, you’d use the command Tools/Web Developer Extension/CSS/Disable Styles/Disable Print Styles. They say it’s available for Chrome too. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2013, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-webpages-wysiwyg/676325/4 "2013-12-15T02:26:52Z")
A properly designed web page _should print differently_ than what you view in a browser. A printed web page has no need for presentation graphics or navigation areas; just the relevant content. As **Space Vegetable** recommends, using a Firefox addon to disable the web developer’s print CSS with your own may be an option. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2013, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/printing-webpages-wysiwyg/676325/5 "2013-12-15T08:05:19Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > A properly designed web page _should print differently_ than what you view in a browser. A printed web page has no need for presentation graphics or navigation areas; just the relevant content. Well that depends on the webpage and why you are printing it. I agree that having that option is useful, although I think it is better implemented as an automatically generated “printer friendly” link rather than a non intuitive printer hijack. But it is screwing with my ability to create a text searchable PDF of the page. Plus, whoever does the CSS usually does a piss poor job anyway with the first page tending to replicate the sidebar text. > [@Duckster](#): > > As **Space Vegetable** recommends, using a Firefox addon to disable the web developer’s print CSS with your own may be an option. I’ll give that a try, thanks.