Firefox 32.0.3 no longer allows view page source. How can I replace this valuable tool?
One of the many valuable features of Firefox has been the ability to easily view the page or frame source of a website. I am a Perl developer and use this to detect bugs in my programs. However with the latest release of Firefox (32.0.3) I'm no longer able to display the source code generated by my Perl scripts. Is there any way to restore this functionality?
I tried prepending 'view-source:' to the URL but that doesn't work. It appears to send a new request to the server instead of showing me the source for the currently displayed page. Since I embed various debugging comments into the code I want to see the code for the currently displayed page.
Thank you for any help or guidance.
All Replies (8)
I think control-u will do what you want. It does on mine.
Unfortunately, this does not present the source code. Instead, I get the following message:
Document Expired
This document is no longer available.
The requested document is not available in Firefox's cache.
As a security precaution, Firefox does not automatically re-request sensitive documents. Click Try Again to re-request the document from the website.
Are you running Firefox in Private Browsing mode?
Is the cache (memory and disk) enabled and working if you check that on the about:cache page?
Is there any POST data or AJAX request send to get those pages?
You can try to disable automatic cache management and set a fixed size.
- Firefox/Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Cached Web Content
For generated source including modifications made during and after loading by scripts in the page, there are a couple of tricks you can try:
(1) For the built-in source viewer: select the entire page (Ctrl+a) and then right-click > View Selection Source. You can click to clear the selection in the source viewer once it loads, as it can be annoying reading text that way.
(2) If you have a good syntax highlighting editor you want to use instead of the built-in source viewer: Ctrl+Shift+i to open the Inspector, right-click the html tag > Copy Outer HTML, then paste into a document in your editor.
Hi. Control-shift-i does nothing for me. Is there a different key combo for MacOSX? (I also tried Cntrl-Shift-i, Option-Shift-i, Cntrl-Option-I, Cmd-Shift-i -- no luck)
Hi errorprone, as you can see, the original poster was using Windows, so we focused on that OS.
You can look up keyboard shortcuts for Mac here:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly#firefox:mac
(I got to that page using the Help menu > Keyboard Shortcuts)
Also, they usually are listed on the menu so in this case, you should be able to find them on either:
- "3-bar" menu button > Developer
- (menu bar) Tools > Web Developer
Testing above in my 35.0, I have found highlighting the desired section or whole page(Cntrl-A), right click to View Selection Source .. . . an unreadable white page results with hidden text highlighted. Copy and paste that into Notepad and voila! There is source of page to the extent the author has allowed.
I would like to add that I think this to be a detriment. One of those "Let's fix what ain't broke" moves . . . my FF(35.0) still crashes all to often and they gotta mess with the View Source option . . . .
And to add salt to that wound wound, the dreaded IE (8.0.6.blah blah) displays when selecting View Page Source . .. . . tadaaaaa . . the page source code plain as day.
Perhaps an option in Settings to turn this useless feature on/off might be appropriate. If there is one, please tell me where. And default it to OFF.