View-source URI scheme explained

The view-source URI scheme is used by some web browsers to construct URIs that result in the browser displaying the source code of a web page or other web resource.^[1]

For example, the URI view-source:<nowiki>https://example.com</nowiki> should show the source of the page located at [https://example.com https://example.com].

In the early internet, View Source helped people to create their own web pages, learning by example.^[2]

On 25 May 2011, the 'view-source' URI scheme was officially registered with IANA^[3] per RFC 4395.

Browser support

Firefox and Internet Explorer both supported the scheme, but support was dropped from Internet Explorer in Windows XP SP2 due to security problems.^[4] Firefox also suffered a similar security issue (by combining view-source and javascript URIs^[5]), but still supported it in Firefox 1.5^[6] after being fixed. In 2009 a new discovered bug was fixed in Firefox 3.0.9.^[7]

Browser	Supported?
	^[8]
	after Windows XP SP2
Safari 3.2.1
Safari 5, 6
Opera 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Opera 15 and up
	^[9]
	(Internalz Pro)^[10]

References

1. https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yevstifeyev-view-source-uri IETF Draft
2. Book: Sahlin . Doug . Building Web Sites All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies . Snell . Claudia . 2007-02-03 . John Wiley & Sons . 978-0-470-12720-9 . en.
3. Web site: Yevstifeyev. M.. 'view-source' URI scheme registration template. 17 July 2011.
4. Web site: view-source Protocol. MSDN. 2009-02-25.
5. Web site: Mozilla Firefox view-source:javascript url Code Execution Exploit. 2009-02-25. https://web.archive.org/web/20070814075238/http://www.milw0rm.com/id.php?id=1007. 2007-08-14. milw0rm. mikx. 2005-05-21.
6. Web site: View Source Bug Fixed and a Tip. blogzilla. jonathan. 2005-11-30. 2009-02-25.
7. Web site: MFSA 2009-17: Same-origin violations when Adobe Flash loaded via view-source scheme. Fleischer. Gregory. April 21, 2009. Mozilla. 2009-04-22.
8. Web site: View Source - Firefox Developer Tools . MDN.
9. Web site: Google Chrome's Full List of Special about: Pages. Lifehacker. 4 September 2008 .
10. Web site: Internalz 1.3 brings style with a dark theme and more. Robitaille. Jason. PreCentral. 2010-08-28. 2011-02-11. https://web.archive.org/web/20110512181830/http://www.precentral.net/internalz-1-3-brings-style-dark-theme-and-more. 2011-05-12. dead.