Command performance: View Page Source

Long, long ago, in another lifetime, I worked as a web developer. Before that, I taught workshops on building webpages. Even before that, as a teenager, I tinkered with HTML at the dawn of the web, experimenting with building pages for myself, projects that I did with friends, and online groups I was a part of. And in all that time, one command has continued to be my guiding star: View Source.

Whether it’s “Page Source,” “View Page Source,” “Show Page Source,” or any other variation, it’s no exaggeration to say that View Source is a command that changed my life. I know lots of folks whose experience with the programming languages underlying early computers sent them into careers in software development, but while I dabbled in programming, it was the web that captured all my love and attention.

In more recent browsers, View Source is sometimes hidden away (in Safari, you need to enable the Develop menu in Preferences [greaterthansymbol]gt;gt; Advanced before you can access it), but it’s never really gone.…