The Ctrl+Shift+D shortcut

It’s the shortcut, which shows you what’s behind a website. Nested tables, nasty markup? Or clean semantic code, valid and web standards proof? Just press Ctrl+Shift+D and watch out.

It would be great if we could press Ctrl+Shift+D in real life. To see if people are really the ones they pretend to be. Don’t know if the person you speak to is trustful? Press Ctrl+Shift+D and you have all the answers.

Well, on the other hand the shortcut has the effect that I despite websites which turn out to rely on tables… and I kind of feel like nothing is good enough for me… That’s not really a good thing, because when I think about it, a website can also be a good website if it doesn’t validate and/or relies on tables. I think many web designers tend to “ignore” such websites. And it’s the work of the vault and stylegala that we focus on “the good web” only.

So if you haven’t already done, install the Web Developer Extension and experience everything on your own.

Update 9:14 pm: Oh no! After providing you with the link to download the web developer toolbar I clicked around and came to download a new version. Seems like Ctrl+Shift+D is gone… hmm… now you can disable all styles with Ctrl+Shift+S, but that loads del.icio.us in my Firefox… what’s going on?

Update 9:23 pm: Fixed! I got it back. You can change keyboard shortcuts in the options menu…

Published by

Julian Bez

Julian Bez

Julian Bez is a software engineer and former startup founder from Berlin, Germany.

  • silvi

    I just have bad experience with this shortcut. Ctrl + Shift + D made me damage in MS Word! any ideas how to fix it?
    Thank you!