RE: Concealed HTML source

Danyel Ceccaldi (dceccald@elaine.crcg.edu)
Fri, 6 Oct 1995 22:20:47 -0400


Hi folks,

As I understood it, in which way you decide to provide
HTML-code, if it is by giving a URL you will ever be able
to view the code by an client which is able to recieve
resources given by its URL.
And even if you decide to implement your own client reading
encrypted html-files not readable by other browsers, someone
will be able to decrypt your encrypted files.

If your only intention is to make sure that no one is 'stealing'
resources linked by some anchors in your html-files, you can
configure your HTML-server to require the 'Referer'-http-header-field
and providing data only if the link is activated from a registered
referer-resource.

Of course this will cause some problems, and isn't the perfect way,
but in general it should be a possibility to 'hide' resources from
non-experts on the web.

The other possibility is to create an own client who deals information
in a way not compatible with HTML or HTTP.

Anyway I don't know, if it would be better to move this discussion to
a newsgroup related to this issue, because IMHO the only thing you can
get from this mailing list is the information that in general you
will be able to view any HTML-code located by a URL.

by Danny