Firefox won't show you the real source of a page
When viewing the 'source' of a page apparently FF finds it acceptable to do a new request for this page. I found this out because it warned me of repeating a post operation when I viewed the source. The only source which can ever be relevant is the one which was used to build the page you are viewing. Leaving aside the utter ridiculousness of having to repeat a post to get the source, even on a GET request it is impossibly to guarantee that the source you get is equivalent to the one you already have.
This means that FF is unusable for professional development. This also means I will not use FF anymore except for testing if thing work with FF. I don't like to keep switching browsers.
This is also so wrong that it undermines my confidence in the programming team behind FF.
All Replies (2)
You can use right click the page and use Select All (Ctrl+A) to select the page and use View > Selection Source to see the source as generated from the DOM.
You can also enable the build-in Inspector by setting the pref devtools.inspector.enabled to true on the about:config page (needs a restart after toggling).
That gives you an Inspect entry in the Tools or in the Firefox > Web Development menu.
There are also extensions that can help with web developement.
- DOM Inspector: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/6622 (https://developer.mozilla.org/En/DOM_Inspector)
- FireBug: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1843 (http://getfirebug.com/faq.html)
- Web Developer: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/60 (http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/)
Show source should act like you describe above. I have a various extensions like you describe. I didn't know about the selection source workaround. It doesn't change the fact that the base behavior of firefox is simply wrong.