a sort of techie html question

WillowTheWhisp · 07-12-2004, 08:29

This may sound like a dumb question but I'd appreciate a serious answer from the webwise amongst us.

You know when you are viewing a website and you go to view the coding (view source) is there any way (apart from when the creator substitutes "clear off you nosey so and so" instead) that what you see may not be what they actually put? In other words can your browser get it wrong and present it to you incorrectly?

Roy · 07-12-2004, 18:44

Nope. Whatever you see in view source is what your browser has downloaded and displayed. However, there are many ways to confuse people. Putting pages in frames is one way. Converting HTML to it's ASCII equivalent is another system that some sites use.
There are a few other ways that are in use, do a search on html protector.
I'm not sure of exactly what javascript can do, but it is quite powerful and can render a page almost uncomprehendable.

I really do recommend installing firefox if you are into developing or playing with html. There are excellent developer tools included as standard and further more as add-ons.

entwisi · 07-12-2004, 19:58

Aye,
as Roy said, The view source contains 'usually' the top level source document. This can use sub pages inside frames although this is seriously frowned upon now due to DDA requirements. YOu can usually view the sources of frames by right clicking in the frame and selecting view frame source.

Code can be made difficult to read by humans but it must obey certain standards or the browsers wouldn't be able to render it.

WillowTheWhisp · 08-12-2004, 09:04

OK, thanks both of you. That kind of confirms what I thought but permit me to sound really dumb for a minute and ask a further question.

Ignoring the fact that human intervention can make code difficult to read (along the lines of someone substituting "stop trying to read my code you nosey so and so") what you see when you view source should actually be what was physically typed out as the original source document, right?

So, if I then save such a thing as html and view it from my PC I get an exact copy of the page don't I? (Excliding any bits and bobs like images hosted elsewhere)

OK, so now if the thing I see in "view source" wasn't actually the source (for one reason or other, example being that maybe the creator had put some other sneaky thing in there instead of "clear off and stop trying to read my code" which looked right but wasn't) and I saved that to my PC I wouldn't be able to see the original page from it would I?

I hope that makes sense. I know what I mean but I'm sometimes not very good at explaining myself.

entwisi · 08-12-2004, 11:07

You should get the core document but as we have said it is possible to have sub docs in frames etc. Plus the formatting may be completley shafted if you don't supply the stylesheet. If this is a particular example let us have the URL and I'll have a shufty.

Weary Tourist · 11-12-2004, 04:47

Create a Microsoft Word document called Fred.doc, and rename it to Fred.htm which is what webpages are normally called. Open that in a browser you would see gibberish with some bits in English.

Would that be similar to what you see ?

If so then it may be the case that either :-
a. You are saving a file as the wrong file type

or

b. the website is doing this for some reason to protect something they created, or perhaps to give you some malicious file that could become active when renamed.

Hope that makes sense.

WillowTheWhisp · 11-12-2004, 10:40

In a word - No. That wasn't what i meant.

Without naming any names I'll try to explain.

A certain website existed but it didn't work properly.

When you looked at the source there were some anomalies.

If I saved what I saw and took out the anomalies and then viewed what I'd got it was fine (apart from pics which I wasn't hosting).

However, when I mentioned this fact I was told that basically I didn't know what I was talking about because what I saw in the "view source" wasn't what was really there.

Subsequently the anomalies have been removed from the original so anyone looking at it now cannot see what was once there.

I think that's about it in a nutshell. I was fairly sure that what I'd said on the subject made sense but was willing to stand corrected by anyone who knows more than I do - but not by silly childish people who only resort to petty name calling when they don't know what they are talking about.

From what has been said both here and in PM, I'm more than happy that I wasn't talking rubbish and that what I thought I'd understood I do actually understand.

Thanks to everyone for your input.

Less · 11-12-2004, 12:53

Good old hyndburn lite that should keep you busy for a very long time Willow, do what it's creators did abandon it!