How do you feel about people being able to view your source code?

I was just wondering how you feel (as a designer) about other web users being able to view your source code through the web browser. We all take time to code our websites just for someone without the knowledge or skills required to nab it at the click of a few buttons.

Why do browsers including this function? Do you think the ability to view html source will ever be done away with? Would it bring any real benefits if it were? I must admit, sometimes I do poke around in other sites code, just to see how certain things are done.

Your thoughts on this issue are appreciated.

It's always nice to see how other people have done things, I personally don't care if people wanna have a look at my sources, in fact I find it pretty stupid to have those Javascripts that disable right clicking.

i don't care if people look at my HTML, its the PHP coding i don't want anyone to see.

and browsers will always have the viewsource. even if IE stops supporting it, poeple can do simple HTTP requests and get the code (if they couldn't, then browsers wouldn't work).

I think it's actually a great tool for all designers until a certain point. I often spend time looking at source codes to see how things are done. I think it's a great way to learn. The golden rule here is to never copy the code and use it as your own, but theres no harm in learning.

I think it is benificial to be able to view the code. As pointed out by sysblnk, it is a great way to learn new things. What would you want to hide (html documents)?

I've been designing for over 5 years now and I still see the odd design feature that makes me view their source

The main thing I view source for though, is for my own designs.

I don't mind people viewing my coding, what I do mind is exact replica's of my code. Each page I design is my unique expression of HTML and CSS, and that expression is actually copywritable. My code layouts are copyright to me.

I don't mind it if someone views my source. It just sucks when they copy your code...but I guess in a way it balances out since they don't gain anything by it.

Originally Posted by Robson Do you think the ability to view html source will ever be done away with? Would it bring any real benefits if it were?

I don't think they will disallow browsers from displaying the source in plain text. Even if they did, there's numerous ways around it. Even if no-cache headers were sent to the browsers, there's numerous ways to retrieve the X/HTML code....unless of course they encrypted the XHTML while letting the browser interpret it (there still would be ways of cracking this because what man makes, man can break )


I wrote a little snippet a while back to hide your CSS from public view (of course there's a million ways to go around this issue but this snippet is meant to be educational. I don't think people should actually hide their CSS)

Here's the link if anyone's interested:
http://www.koobi-studio.com/download...ppets/hideCss/

That won't work with IE though because IE loads CSS from cache which is the wrong thing to do. I can fix it by adding no-cache headers but I'm too lazy to just add those 3-4 lines of text :P

Being able to view the site's source is definately a good tool. Back when I first learn't HTML this was was one of the most important tools for me in learning how to code HTML.

The problem we face today is that browsers today interperoate HTML, XHTML and CSS in different ways even still with the big push for standards and accessability. Ideally if a coder was to code this page it would look pretty much the same no matter who the coder is. The problem is that this does not work in theory and coders have to find ways to get around browser problems. This is the only time I think you can see some form of creativity and difference coming on to the code and I don't think it's a big deal that others can see this code and learn from it.

Originally Posted by Travis The problem we face today is that browsers today interperoate HTML, XHTML and CSS in different ways even still with the big push for standards and accessability. Ideally if a coder was to code this page it would look pretty much the same no matter who the coder is. The problem is that this does not work in theory and coders have to find ways to get around browser problems.

I agree with you there. I think this came about during the browser wars and due to sloppy coding habits.
I think a browser should be like an XML parser; if the page is not a valid X/HTML document, it should not render the page, it should display an error instead.

If this was the case then all pages on the web would be X/HTML valid and the internet would be a LOT more efficient. Search engines would be a LOT more effective which in turn would make us a LOT more efficient. Data exchange will also be a LOT more efficient.




This is the case with anything. If there's a common standard/protocol to exchange data/information, things would be a LOT more efficient. That is common sense.

like someone else said here, i dont mind people seeing my html coding. it's my perl/php i dont want them to see