If I key F12 on my keyboard it brings up the HTML code that controls the page. What would someone use that for?

F12 opens the developer tools. We (developers) use this every day. It would likely be of little use for you, however.

I understand that. I’ve written code in the past. What good does it do to even show up though if it can’t be edited?

It’s not an HTML editor. It’s a whole set of tools used for many things, including inspecting DOM elements or even debugging javascript. Here is some info on the Chrome dev tools.

What @hominid said.

I also use it to see if any of my web design students are plagiarizing their code.

I use it to test changes to things like CSS. Say I need to move something around a few pixels it allows me to edit on the page and see the changes instantly instead of saving the file and uploading and reloading the page. I can edit.

Wouldn’t that screw up the page for eveyone @johnpowell?

Most of the time that code is pulled together from dozens of files if you’re using any sort of software package to manage a site.

Looking at the code that’s actually output (the HTML you’re seeing) lets you see what’s going out to the world without all the logic included. Basically it’s the end product of a long process and sometimes that’s the best way to find problems without having to go through all the machinery.

IE added this as a response to most web developers defecting to firefox when firebug came out.

and your changes there aren’t saved to the server, if you reload the page, it goes back to the way it was. No one else would ever see your tweaks.

Well, I’m trying to play but nothing is happening.

So, you guys can’t see the changes I made to the font here?

No. It only changes what you see. Think of the mess if everyone could edit everything.

That’s what I was imagining @johnpowell! Well…this shall be fun!

What is a “skeleton-sprite”?

OMG! My page is a MESS!!

To make up a social-question website kind of question?

It’s not just your page that’s a mess, @Dutchess_III!

You can do all kinds of fun stuff with it. Most recently I used it for GTA V Online. You can design a crew emblem using a vectoring program on rockstars site. I didn’t feel like drawing one so I took an image, converted it to a vector and then copied to html code from said vector image. I then opened the script on the rockstar page and pasted my code in there. Viola image appears on screen , ready to save and import into the game.