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I need to print some pages with CSS backgrounds but they don't appear in Safari or Chrome, in FF there's an option in Page Setup but I haven't been able to find it in these two browsers. Do they not support it?

Thanks all in advance.

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2 Answers 2

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Printing background images is a browser-dependent feature. FF and IE have it but you cannot force it otherwise via sourcecode.

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I don't mean to force it, I was just wondering if there was an option to turn it on just like in FF –  javiervd Mar 18 '11 at 18:59
I'm only aware of a similiar option in IE. Sorry. –  Angry Spartan Mar 18 '11 at 19:34
See luke-h's answer below. You can use the mysterious print-colour-adjust property in webkit. –  dmnc May 16 '12 at 15:10

In chrome (newer versions 17+ I think), this is controlled by a CSS property on the items which developers can add:


From the user's point of view, there doesn't seem to be an option for this.

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This also fixes some text colour issues. The only other value I can see any reference to is 'economy' so I'm presuming the idea of this is to reduce ink usage by removing background's and simplifying colours? –  dmnc May 16 '12 at 15:11
@dmnc what text color issues? –  Ben Oct 10 '12 at 21:04
@Ben When you print from webkit, it will simplify colours so, for example, if a colour has a small amount of cyan and a large amount of magenta then it prints as fully magenta to save ink. This declaration disables that. –  dmnc Oct 11 '12 at 22:28
@dmnc interesting. do you have a source for this ink switching behavior? (Yes, I've googled.) I personally think the whole property is misbegotten, anti-standards, and should be shelved. Both background printing and ink management are for users and printers to decide, not developers. –  Ben Oct 11 '12 at 23:31
@raphie Chrome just changed course on this issue. Canary builds have checkboxes for toggling background printing. See this long and contentious chromium thread for the history: code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113594 –  Ben Mar 1 '13 at 20:03

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