Forum Moderators: open
I saw it mentioned, along with a similar one, in an issue of a web wesigner magazine that I purchased in the UK. The article said the products could protect my code and it gave these links:
< links removed - see Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com] >
And then a Google search revealed that things were not quite as great as I thought:
< same as above >
So my question is am I right to think that these products do not prevent browser users from viewing the original HTML/CSS? I tested one product's encrpyted page with the Edit HTML function of Firefox and the HTML/CSS was clearly readable.
If so it makes the encryption claims very dubious. Is the best claim of these products merely that they can only hinder a less knowledgable browser user from reading the code (if only for a while)?
[edited by: tedster at 7:16 pm (utc) on Feb. 1, 2009]
i imagine this thread will be pulled by the mods - however if not ...
html and css must be readable by the browser to render the page.
if it is readable by the browser it is available to the user somewhere if they know where/how to look - end of story.
the main question is, why do you want to hide your code? do you really have soemthing that is so clever and so original that it can't be found elsewhere anyway?
Absolutely not - I'm not that clever. However, I have spent valuable hours producing a website I thought looked passable and followed good practice/legal/accessibility requirements etc. It's not something I've ripped off from elsewhere so to have my work/design ripped off by someone esle seems a bit galling.
Or maybe that's something I'll have to get used on the www!
Don;t waste your time or money on this, there's no use whatsoever.
am I right to think that these products do not prevent browser users from viewing the original HTML/CSS?
Webpilot, that's been the general understanding on these forums for a long time. Good for you that you did your own research and came to the same money-saving conclusion!
That said, I do wonder if encrypted source code might not stop at least some casual, automated scraping. There might be just a bit of value there.
I did wonder about the value of preventing the casual/automated scraping.
To get a product like this to integrate well with your site I bet there's lots more integration and testing work to perform. My immediate concern would be that search engine ranking might be impacted if you obfuscated some of your body content.
Is it worth all the extra effort and delay? I'm tending to think not. I already have a negative mindset as a result of the product sales patter.
... partly if you are online then getting ripped off is one of the prices you pay, just like having a shop - theft always exists, of course you try to minimise it just like online, but 100% is impossible.
unsophisticated bots/scrapers can be stopped easily but it gets harder as they get smarter, it is an ewver upward battle.
at some point you have to decide what is acceptable (loss) to you, and everybody here on WebmasterWorld will have a different opinion as to where that line is drawn, from very hardcore to very liberal.
I didn't take your post as sharp at all. I'm fairly easy going. If my exclamation mark made you think that - oops - I just used it to emphasise that one sentence. (Blimey you have to be so careful how you write things - I've already managed to breach forum guidelines in my first post. Way to go.)
Anyway - back to the NFL Superbowl - being broadcast by the BBC over t'internet.
