The homepage of Google is extremely simple but if you have ever had a chance to look at the underlying HTML / JavaScript code, you know how complicated the code is – see this copy.

Web developers and programmers often obfuscate code for two reasons – one, the code becomes smaller thus reducing the overall time it takes to download a web page. Second, obfuscated code is difficult to understand and thus the programming logic is hidden, well sort-of, from prying eyes.

It is however extremely easy to de-obfuscate, or you can also say reverse-engineer, any piece of obfuscated code and make it more human-readable. Here’s how:

If you have Google Chrome, open the web page that has the JavaScript you are trying to decrypt. Press F12 to open Developer Tools inside Chrome. Now switch to the Scripts tab, right-click and choose De-obfuscate source. That’s it!

Alternatively, go to jsbeautifier.org and copy-paste the cryptic JavaScript /HTML code that you are trying to understand. Hit the Beautify button and voila! Mystery solved.

Demo: De-obfuscate JavaScript with Chrome