Is it necessary to go for HTML encryption?

I have seen many number of 开发者_如何学JAVAsoftware used for HTML code encryption,

the pages which have undergone encryption, when clicked "view source" show an encrypted code,

My questions is .. what is the significance of this? Is it an attempt to protect the contents of the website, like music, pictures? or possessiveness about the brilliancy behind the coding ??

Why would one prefer to use it ?

It's just a method found by beginners studying HTML, against other beginners. They think it may help to hide their 'valuable' HTML, which is valuable enough for other people to wish to steal it. In 90's, lots of instances appeared on the market in a small time. It's a kind of a scam, works as advertised, but is useless. The basic idea is; there are people who pay for those programs, and it's easy to write one.

In the end; pure HTML is needed for the browser to work, and in the worst case (if a script is involved to decode the HTML on the fly) you can just grab it from a dom viewer like firebug.

On the buyer's side; most buyers falsely think it protects their HTML, even the content (that's the trap) and some fewer buyers know it's impossible to hide or scramble the final HTML (the dom), but they think it's 'at least' a way to hide their 'brilliant' HTML from VERY beginners. Some methods even involve feeding the source with some blank lines, so the viewer, without scrolling(!) would think the file is empty.

It's a 'cream of wonders' type of thing. I don't think they can find many (any) customers in this era.

Generally it is a (misguided) attempt to protect the intellectual property of the HTML itself. Misguided, because just copying the HTML of a site generally wouldn't be very useful to a competitor and it just makes it harder for legitimate users (including the developers themselves) to see what the page is really doing.

Note that JavaScript minification does serve a legitimate purpose: reducing the page load time.