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How do I return to the "parent" source after following a link in a page source?

  • 4 replies
  • 14 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by thenitbit

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After following a link in a page source, I would like to be able to switch back to the 'parent' source. The only option I found is to close the source completely and open the page source once again. A "back" option would be useful here...

After following a link in a page source, I would like to be able to switch back to the 'parent' source. The only option I found is to close the source completely and open the page source once again. A "back" option would be useful here...

Chosen solution

I just tried viewing page source and the back/forward buttons on my mouse worked.

If that is not an option for you, another possibility is to set View Page Source to use a external application of your choice that does have back/forward buttons. The Dafizilla ViewSourceWith can be used to set an external application to view the source. You can also set an external application by modifying 2 hidden preferences, the following 2 links show what to change:

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Firefox has back & forward buttons, if they are missing see Navigation buttons like back, home, bookmarks and reload are missing.

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Thank you for the fast answer, Tony! Apparently you misinterpreted my question (or I was not clear enough describing it) because my question has nothing to do with normal surfing. The back & forward buttons are present and fully functional in my browser.

With "page source" I meant the information that can be reached by pressing Ctrl+U. Some page sources contain links to e.g. js scripts. When I click on such a link, indeed the source of the script is shown. At that point there is no turning back to the original page source where the link was in...

My browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; nl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E)

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Chosen Solution

I just tried viewing page source and the back/forward buttons on my mouse worked.

If that is not an option for you, another possibility is to set View Page Source to use a external application of your choice that does have back/forward buttons. The Dafizilla ViewSourceWith can be used to set an external application to view the source. You can also set an external application by modifying 2 hidden preferences, the following 2 links show what to change:

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Thanks again, TonyE! Thanks to your post I discovered the right-click menu. My problem is solved!