Had a discussion about this at my bootcamp today, and thought it was a really interesting part of web history.
Given the open nature of the web I assume view source has always been a thing in all browsers.
Thanks for any answers.
Ask HN: When were dev tools first introduced? Has 'view source' always existed?
1–6 of 6 posts
Re: Ask HN: When were dev tools first introduced? Has 'view source' always existed?
#2First tool I ever used that I remember being good was Firebug which I was using around 2006-2007. That was one of my main reasons for using Firefox at that point. Once Google Chrome came along with it's inspector, I switched browsers.
Re: Ask HN: When were dev tools first introduced? Has 'view source' always existed?
#3View source has been around forever. NCSA Mosaic had it.
Re: Ask HN: When were dev tools first introduced? Has 'view source' always existed?
#4Netscape 3 had so.e rudimentary dev tools, and a WYSIWYG editor that were dev tools, abd a JavaScript console.
Re: Ask HN: When were dev tools first introduced? Has 'view source' always existed?
#5View Source has been available since "The Beginning"; its how we learned html back in the day.
As @Aredridel says, (the grandfather of all browsers) Mosaic had it. And since Internet Explorer was based on Mosaic, IE had it View Source from the start too.
Here's a good history lesson on "The Birth of Mosaic": http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/bina.jsp
Re: Ask HN: When were dev tools first introduced? Has 'view source' always existed?
#6Like said, the "view source" as viewing the html text source code has been around for ever. But the "Inspect Element" OR "visual representation of the DOM Tree" has been established AT LEAST since IE8 with the F12 Developer Tools.