Websites Should Be Printable
- ID
- 39721
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 26 Oct 2026, 6:32 PM
- Fetched
- 27 Oct 2026, 4:58 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://brennenputh.me/blog/printable-websites/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 6.0
- Created
- 27 Oct 2026, 4:58 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
Brennen Puth argues that websites should be printable and shows a concrete print stylesheet after testing his own site: body text was about two sizes too large, the header looked bad, and links printed gray in black-and-white. The snippet uses .onlyPrint and .noPrint classes, sets paragraph/list text to 12pt, headings to 13–16pt, code labels to 11pt, and forces links to black under @media print. The Hacker News thread drew 235 points and 162 comments.
Why it matters
If you publish docs, blogs, or reference pages, this is a small CSS change you can decide on now: hide navigation/header with .noPrint, show print-only attribution with .onlyPrint, set body/list text to 12pt and headings to 13–16pt, and force links to black so they remain readable on a monochrome printer.
Discussion angle
Which pages in your product or docs are actually worth printing, and is maintaining a print stylesheet cheaper than telling users to export a PDF?