If you find a website that you like, then there are a couple of things that you can do to capture the elements you most enjoy and integrate them into your own website.

Right clicking anywhere on the web page that you like and selecting “view source” brings you to the code that powers the website.

With the exception of Flash and php, you can figure out a whole lot by viewing source. For example, if it’s the color scheme you enjoy most, then place your cursor at the top of the page of code and then hold down the control key while pressing the letter f on your keyboard. You just opened the search function. Type in “#” and hit enter. You’ll be able to see all the hexadecimal colors placed on this page of code. Record the 6 digit numbers for your personal use, when you’re creating your own site.

Having a problem seeing any hexadecimal numbers?

Unless you are trying to view source of a website powered entirely by Flash, (which means you’re out of luck because you can’t view source code on 100% Flash sites) the page may be employing an external style sheet. Because it’s good standard practice to include color choices in an external CSS, let’s try this: place your cursor at the top of the page of code again. If you don’t have the search function open, hold down the control key while pressing the “f” on your keyboard. Now, type this in the search function: .css

Hit enter.

You’ll probably see something like this, located somewhere within the top 10 lines of code:

link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”http://www.HereIsWhereTheStyleSheetIs.css” /

Simply copy and paste the URL into the address bar of another browser window, and hit enter. You’ll be presented with the style sheet, and, if the developer knew what he/she was doing, then you can conduct another search, looking for your hexadecimal color combinations, within this style sheet.

If you’re new at this, this reverse engineering pracitce will remind you that a lot of code out there is available to be viewed by any person on the planet.

There is a lot more you can learn, by looking at code, than just hexadecimal color combinations.

If you’d like a souped up website for your business – or you suspect that your website could be performing better or driving more traffic your way, why not give me a call? Visit my studio space at: MAU Web Studio.

Thanks for reading!