Sean Walther's Blog

How you can fix IE8′s slow “View Source”

I installed Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) on my main machine a few weeks ago, and have been using other browser’s “View Source” since IE8′s default View Source editor takes forever to load.

With all the work, I didn’t have time to figure out how to fix it, but YOU CAN!

IE8 uses an internal viewer by default, but you can easily change it:

1. Get into the Developer Tools screen (F12 or Tools->Developer Tools)
2. File->Customize Internet Explorer View Source (yeah I know, weird)
3. Set to Notepad (like it used to be) or “Other” and use your viewer (I used TextPad)

Now, can anyone recommend a better “View Source” application?  I haven’t looked into this, but it may be a great opportunity to improve efficiency doing HTML and debugging.

Tags: Developer Tools, IE8, Internet Explorer 8, NotePad, Textpad, View Source