A developer fixed his blog's printing with a dozen CSS lines and HN argued about paper
Brennen Puth printed his own site and found oversized text, an ugly header and blue links turned gray.
His @media print block hides the header, shows an author credit only on paper, sets body text to 12pt and forces links black.
Most commenters said they never print. Two shared the problems that remain: dropped backgrounds and font sizes.
The fixes
The post uses a .noPrint class for the header, an .onlyPrint credit, 12pt body text with 13 to 16pt headings, a border and smaller font on code blocks (still the hardest part) and black links with !important.
What breaks anyway
"I'm not so on board with changing the default font size or fonts in the print version." — Beej, author of Beej's Guides and a computer science instructor
"printing, by default, removes background colors and images. So, for the chess diagrams I have on my webpage, I use background colors to have the chessboard be a checkerboard" — a developer with chess diagrams on his site
If your pages carry diagrams drawn with CSS backgrounds, they will print blank unless the reader changes a browser setting, so test your print preview before the font sizes.
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