How To Show Web Page Source from a Hyperlink

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This article was previously published under Q188762

Summary

This article describes how to create a hyperlink on a Web page that shows the source code for the current page or another page when the hyperlink is selected.

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More information

Using an anchor tag with its associated HREF parameter, you can cause a hyperlink to display the source of a Web page when the hyperlink is clicked. To do so, set the value of the HREF parameter equal to "view- source:someFile.htm" where someFile.htm is the name of an HTML file that you want to show using the default editor for HTML source code.

Being able to display the source code of a Web page is valuable to those Internet Content Providers (ICPs) that wish to demonstrate how their pages have been created.

Please note that "view-source" works only on absolute links. Also, if you are trying to access an HTML file through the FILE protocol, you must fully qualify the URL like this:

Some Link

The following HTML code demonstrates how to show the source code for http://www.microsoft.com/ie40.htm when the hyperlink is pressed.

   <HTML>
      <HEAD>
         <TITLE>Show microsoft.com source code</TITLE>
      </HEAD>
      <BODY>
         <A HREF="view-source:http://www.microsoft.com/ie40.htm">
            Show microsoft.com/ie40.htm source code
         </A>
      </BODY>
   </HTML>

NOTE: When you use this protocol a copy of the file is written to the temp directory.

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