Re: (fwd) Announce: New s/w makes it easy to develop dynamic...

Michael McCulley writes:

> The recent discussion of "hidden" HTML coding reminded me of this item,
> lurking in my files from the newsgroup noted. I haven't checked it out,
> but it seems to offer some solutions for this type of application.
> 
> I'd be curious if anyone has worked yet with W3MAGIC(tm).
:
> Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 23:53:55 -0700
> Newgroups: comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix
> From: alweiner@clark.net (Alan Weiner) 
> Subject: Announce: New s/w makes it easy to develop dynamic pages and WWW MIS 
> 
> Developing eye-catching pages, creative storefronts and comprehensive MIS 
> systems
>  on the WWW just 
> became simple!
:
> Form development and processing is another area facilitated by W3MAGIC(tm).  
> Deve lopers can use the 
> language to define various types of data, including integer, floating point, 
:

I like "Deve lopers". I think I know some Deve lopers...

> ...  Check it out at:
> http://www.clark.net/pub/alweiner/cgi-bin/homepage.cgi?w3magic

I checked this URL, and it seems like it's a CGI script that does a bit
of pre-processing to comments inserted in the HTML source. There isn't
any HTML encryption going on; they just don't show you the commands used
to get the q00l FX (before pre-processing):

| How can W3MAGIC encrypt code? Doesn't the user's browser let you see
| all the code?
| 
| Well, yes and no. Let's say you wanted to set-up a password-protected
| page where you use W3MAGIC tags and logic to validate the user. Here's
| the sequence of events:
| 
|  1. The browser connects with your HTML document -- which also contains
|     the validation criterion
| 
|  2. W3MAGIC evaluates your selection criterion and decides whether or
|     not the user can see the rest of the page (or gets sent somewhere else)
| 
|  3. W3MAGIC tags are not displayed on the screen as they are 'executed'
|     -- even through the user's browser
| 
|  4. A valid user would be presented with the HTML page. An invalid user
|     would be sent to a different page.
| 
| All your user selection logic [but not the HTML...] is protected from
| the browser's VIEW SOURCE button. [...]

If someone ever managed to really encrypt HTML, it could be restored with
a pretty-printer... if browsers can understand it, so can humans.

Gerald
-- 
Gerald Oskoboiny  <gerald@cs.ualberta.ca>  http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~gerald/

Received on Thursday, 5 October 1995 15:23:26 UTC