This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Firefox is asking password to show HTML source and shows old cached content.

  • 1 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

Recently I have noticed that when I want to display HTML source of the page Firefox asks me to log to the site once again. WHY? I am already logged in. The page is already loaded and displayed. So why it needs my password again?????

In some cases the page is actually loaded once again which can result in different content being displayed as "a page" and different as "a source" (if there is a dynamic insertion on the page changed on every get). But sometimes it shows old, cached source while the rendered page is already changed. I know that I can see actual content by using the Inspector but "show the source" function was more convenient. Now I can not believe that the "source" shown is a source of the actual "page" Such misfeatures make the function totally useless.

Firefox version 91.8.0esr for Debian.

Recently I have noticed that when I want to display HTML source of the page Firefox asks me to log to the site once again. WHY? I am already logged in. The page is already loaded and displayed. So why it needs my password again????? In some cases the page is actually loaded once again which can result in different content being displayed as "a page" and different as "a source" (if there is a dynamic insertion on the page changed on every get). But sometimes it shows old, cached source while the rendered page is already changed. I know that I can see actual content by using the Inspector but "show the source" function was more convenient. Now I can not believe that the "source" shown is a source of the actual "page" Such misfeatures make the function totally useless. Firefox version 91.8.0esr for Debian.

All Replies (1)

more options

If the page has been modified via JavaScript or otherwise then you can only see the actual source via the Inspector or by selecting the full page via Ctrl+A and View Selection Source in the right-click context menu. Using "View page Source" or using the view-Source: protocol prefix always makes Firefox reload the unmodified page from the server.