JavaScript print Events

By  on  

Media queries provide a great way to programmatically change behavior depending on viewing state. We can target styles to device, pixel ratio, screen size, and even print. That said, it's also nice to have JavaScript events that also allow us to change behavior. Did you know you're provided events both before and after printing?

I've always used @media print in stylesheets to control print display, but JavaScript provides beforeprint and afterprint events:

function toggleImages(hide = false) {
  document.querySelectorAll('img').forEach(img => {
    img.style.display = hide ? 'none' : '';
  });
}

// Hide images to save toner/ink during printing
window.addEventListener('beforeprint', () => toggleImages(true))
window.addEventListener('afterprint', () => toggleImages());

It may sound weird but considering print is very important, especially when your website is documentation-centric. In my early days of web, I had a client who only "viewed" their website from print-offs. Styling with @media print is usually the best options but these JavaScript events may help!

Recent Features

  • By
    Facebook Open Graph META Tags

    It's no secret that Facebook has become a major traffic driver for all types of websites.  Nowadays even large corporations steer consumers toward their Facebook pages instead of the corporate websites directly.  And of course there are Facebook "Like" and "Recommend" widgets on every website.  One...

  • By
    CSS Animations Between Media Queries

    CSS animations are right up there with sliced bread. CSS animations are efficient because they can be hardware accelerated, they require no JavaScript overhead, and they are composed of very little CSS code. Quite often we add CSS transforms to elements via CSS during...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Using Dotter for Form Submissions

    One of the plugins I'm most proud of is Dotter. Dotter allows you to create the typical "Loading..." text without using animated images. I'm often asked what a sample usage of Dotter would be; form submission create the perfect situation. The following...

  • By
    Use Elements as Background Images with -moz-element

    We all know that each browser vendor takes the liberty of implementing their own CSS and JavaScript features, and I'm thankful for that. Mozilla and WebKit have come out with some interesting proprietary CSS properties, and since we all know that cementing standards...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!