I just recently read the topic here about Alphabet's quarterly earnings and couldn't resist to peek at the HTML code of Alphabet's website. I found a real nice ASCII art gem in their investors page [abc.xyz].
In the past I already spotted companies searching for web developers by placing job offers in HTML comments.
Am I the only one so deformed that I am looking at other sites' code on a regular base?
engine
9:07 am on Apr 29, 2021 (gmt 0)
hahaha, that's funny, because you're not alone. I don't look at every site that way, but, yes, I look, too. Perhaps i'm deformed, too. lol
NickMNS
12:23 pm on Apr 29, 2021 (gmt 0)
couldn't resist to peek at the HTML code
I assume you mean you are reading the "page-source". If the assumption is correct that you're not the only one, but you're old school.
I don't typically check "page-source", but I often surf pages with dev-tools open, to watch what is happening with the console, and also peak into the JS code. I also use it to "manage" content, like make pop-ups disappear or hide annoying videos.
Dev-tools display's the ASCII art immediately, whereas page-source requires you to scroll all the way to the bottom.
not2easy
12:26 pm on Apr 29, 2021 (gmt 0)
Years ago I spotted one related to wordpress. Curiosity causes learning (and learning causes curiosity).
topr8
12:50 pm on Apr 29, 2021 (gmt 0)
not the only one - i do too.
iamlost
1:12 pm on Apr 29, 2021 (gmt 0)
Me too, whenever a site is especially terrible or has an interesting feature, behaviour.
lucy24
4:02 pm on Apr 29, 2021 (gmt 0)
I used to amuse myself by counting up how many separate stylesheets are called by a page, but when the count starting running over 30 it just wasn't funny any more.
But the ABC is very nice.
ronin
9:04 am on May 7, 2021 (gmt 0)
I don't typically check "page-source", but I often surf pages with dev-tools open
I use both fairly frequently.
Dev Tools tells me what's going on with the DOM at any particular moment.
View Source tells me what the markup first looked like when the page was initially downloaded, prior to any DOM manipulation.
Both very useful.
Last year I discovered that browsers no longer let you link to URLs beginning with view-source: so, for my own CMS (which repurposes HTML source as a kind of console display) I wrote a javascript-powered button which approximates view-source: (albeit it shows the current DOM, rather than the initial DOM):
