839803 - Option to Use View Page Source Data for View Selection Source

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: View Source, enhancement)

Description

[David E. Ross]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 SeaMonkey/2.15.2

Even when an entire Web page has been selected, the display when View Selection Source is requested from the pull-down context menu does not reflect the display when [View > Page Source] is requested from the menu bar.  This has been extensively discussed in bug #164906 and less so in bug #346884 and bug #838892.  The conclusions there is that this is intentional, that View Selection Source is using the DOM as input.  It has also been asserted that View Selection Source cannot obtain the actual source, which is not entirely true since [View > Page Source] does seem to be very close to the original source.  

View Selection Source inserts tags into its display that do not exist in the source, deletes the <!DOCTYPE> declaration, and reformats the source (e.g., combining lines, eliminating indentations).  [View > Page Source] does not insert tags, shows the <!DOCTYPE> declaration, and preserves the original formatting.  

This RFE -- recognizing that the current display by View Selection Source is intentional -- requests a user option not to use the DOM input but instead to use same input as is used by [View > Page Source].  

Use case:  In a rather large Web page of mine, I wanted to copy a small part of the markup for use in another page.  It was far easier to view the existing page, mark the portion of content, and View Selection Source than to open the original source HTML file and search it.  Actually, this is something I do quite often.  But when I did this, View Selection Source displays tag soup created in DOM.  Discussions in bug #164906 and bug #346884 indicate that I am not alone in wanting to see something other than the DOM tag soup.