Like in everything else, there are many ways to do the same thing. Different browsers do it in different ways and the process may vary between Windows and Mac. So, there’s a bit of confusion on this topic at the moment because what works for one may not work for others. Let me see if I can help in case someone is still having trouble with this or someone reads this later.
This forum does have a printing mode that should work with all browsers. A “printing mode” is just a clean view of the page, without all the buttons and scrollbars, etc. so that it looks nicer in print — this is useful for when you want to print a whole topic.
To get to the printing mode, is just need to tell the browser to print. There is no print button included on the webpage itself because all browsers already have the print command somewhere on its menus. Typically this is under the first/main File
menu. There are also shortcuts for this like several mentioned (Control+P on Windows, Command+P on Mac). Printing sometimes brings up a pop-up window (with the “printing mode” view): pay attention if your browser doesn’t block this by default — this seems to be a common issue with Firefox — keep an eye on the URL bar to unblock it if nothing is happening.
Right, so the above is if one wants to print the whole page/topic and be done with it.
If you one wants to print just a selection of text, this is more tricky to explain because it will depend on your browser, operating system, etc. It should be doable with most popular browsers and common OS’s but in some cases you’ll need some patience to find the right setting.
Start by selecting the text you want to print, then find the Print entry on the menus (or through the shortcut) as described above — that will bring you to the Print dialog with a bunch of options (printer, paper size, etc). In this dialog, you’ll need to find the option that allows to print the selection only. On Chrome on a Mac, this may look like this:
An edge case to be aware of: if in this process a pop-up window came up with the “printing mode” view, you may need to close the Print dialog first, select in that pop-up window the text you want to print, and then issue the Print command again so that you see the “Selection only” checkbox available. This can happen because Discourse tries to be helpful for the most common case (print the whole topic), but if you are trying to print just a selection, you’ll need to do that again on the pop-up window.
Hope this helps someone! If you are still stuck, report here what is happening to you, together with what browser and operating system you are on so that others on the same setup can guide you. Good luck and don’t waste paper!