>> the HTML and/or CSS have been run through a minifier The purpose of these tools is to make code hard to understand by the curious Whitespace is eliminated and variables are changed to unhelpful names.
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>No, usually the goal is to minimize bandwidth. Smaller files download faster. Readability does take a a hit, too, though. Honestly I'm more surprised if a site ISN'T minifying their code.
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>BTW - Chrome dev. tools has a "Pretty Print" option available available when you're viewing the source. It doesn't restore variable names but it does reformat the code to make it easier to follow. It's the { } icon at the bottom, to the left of the Line #, Column # text.

Thanks for the input, Paul. Great point about making downloads faster so sites are snappier. Everyone wants that. However, and not to be argumentative, I think obscuring the code is also a good reason to use a minimizer. Maybe I am just not an open source kind of guy at heart ;-) I have always considered computer code as intellectual property which should be reasonably protected like any other property.