Strange....

I upgraded IE from 6. 0 to 7.0 somewhere last weekend. (Was it really last weekend - wasn't it even before? Well, not sure, but anyway that's not the point.)

I tried to connect to the Internet after that. On my machine, you have to connect to a local URL that is made available by the ISP (Airtel Broadband) and then click the Connect button there to connect to the Internet. I tried accessing that URL, but IE gave the usual "Page cannot be displayed" message. I tried several times, with no luck. Finally, in frustration, I called up the ISP's call center. The service provider after a few unsuccessful trials, called up his senior technical officer, or some such thing. He returned saying that his senior technical officer, or some such thing, had said that the modem was not compatible with IE7. I thought that was strange, but accepted it at that point of time.

Today, I connected to the Net using Firefox browser. Just to check if the problem was still occurring in IE 7.0, I opened it. It immediately connected to the Yahoo News page (oh... that's because I downloaded the IE 7 installer that comes bundled with the Yahoo toolbar). "Strange", I thought, "but ya that's because it is the ISP URL that is not compatible." But a doubt nagged at me, and I still connected to the URL. And it worked!!!!

Dunno what happened... may be someone in my family did some magic.. I haven't asked whether they tinkered around.. I didn't attempt anything at rectify it though...

Viewing Current HTML Source in AJAX

Now this is a solution I have been waiting for a long time. In AJAX based applications, everyone knows that it is possible to change the HTML without even refreshing the page. Here's the catch: Suppose you have done so, and now face an error. You want to debug the HTML, but now find that when you do a View Source, you get the HTML that was originally sent by the browser, not the current HTML. This can get increasingly frustrating, and sometimes even gets on your nerves. Why can't there be an option to view the current HTML? Many of the developers in my office resigned to this fact.

But fear not, frustrate not. You do have an option, a way out. In fact, two ways, if you are using Firefox/Mozilla apart from IE. If you are using Firefox/Mozilla, simply install the WebDeveloper extension. This is very useful for web developers like you and me. Apart from the various options it provides, click on the View Source -> View Generated Source menu option and hey presto!!, you get what you want.

OK, that one was for Firefox/Mozilla. What about IE? For that, you must visit this blog entry by Rumen Stankov.

Update (10th Jan 2008): Looks like the link to the Rumen Stankov article doesn't work. Well, I'll post the info here. In IE, to get the latest HTML source, just type

javascript:“<xmp>” + document.body.innerHTML + “</xmp>”

in the address bar and press Enter.