Faster way to develop and test print stylesheets (avoid print preview every time)?

Question

You can use the Chrome Media Type Emulation as accepted in the post See print css in the browser.

UPDATE 21/11/2017

The updated DevTools doc can be found here: View a page in print mode.

To view a page in print mode:
1. Open the Command Menu. (tl;dr Cmd+Shift+P (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows, Linux))
2. Start typing Rendering and select Show Rendering.
3. For the Emulate CSS Media dropdown, select print.

---

UPDATE 29/02/2016

The DevTools docs have moved and the above link provides inaccurate information. The updated docs regarding Media type emulation can be found here: Preview styles for more media types.

Open the DevTools emulation drawer by clicking the More overrides ••• more overrides icon in the top right corner of the browser viewport. Then, select Media in the emulation drawer.

UPDATE 12/04/2016

Unfortunately, it seems the docs have not been updated in regards to print emulation. However, the Print Media Emulator has moved (again):

1. Open Chrome DevTools
2. Hit esc on your keyboard
3. Click ⋮ (vertical ellipsis)
4. Choose Rendering
5. Tick Emulate print media

See screenshot below:

UPDATE 28/06/2016

Google Developers Docs around Chrome DevTools and the "Emulate Media" option have been updated for Chrome >51:

https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/settings?hl=en#emulate-print-media

To view a page in print preview mode, open the DevTools main menu, select More Tools > Rendering Settings, and then enable the emulate media checkbox with the dropdown menu set to print.

UPDATE 24/05/2016

The naming of settings have changed once again:

To view a page in print preview mode, open the DevTools main menu, select More Tools > Rendering, and then enable the Emulate CSS Media checkbox with the dropdown menu set to print.

In Firefox you can type Shift+F2 to open a Developer Toolbar command line, and then type media emulate print

You can also emulate other media types this way.

Firefox + Web Developer toolbar extension has a way to enable/disable various stylesheets.

Look under the CSS menu. There is a menu to disable and enable individual stylesheets and a "Display by media type" menu as well.

Also, to just reduce the steps to get to PrintPreview in Firefox, try the PrintPreview extension, that will create a toolbar button.

For Chrome, there is a port of that extension. From what I can tell with the Chrome version, you can choose "Show print styles"

I wouldn't use any testing method that doesn't involve print preview. There are too many differences: background images not working at all in print, but showing up in normal screen contexts being chief among them.

In Chrome, control+p goes immediately to print preview. (Just forget mousing up to your menu bar). That's pretty easy.

You could simply disable your screen styles and change your media type to "screen" for your print stylesheet while testing. This will not be exactly the same as using a real print preview (page breaks, document width, etc.), but it still gives you a pretty good idea.