Tuesday, October 28, 2008

An Unorthodox Proxy

Proxies are a pain, mainly because a lot of websites block proxies, too. Here's a system I developed for bypassing restrictions imposed by the webmaster overlord near you.

1. Search for "source code viewer" on Google. Open a few of the first few links, as sometimes one of the sites won't work. I normally use this site.

2. Search for "HTML test bed" on Google. The first result works very well for what we are going to do.

3. In the source code viewer website(s), enter the address of the website you wish to view. When the source code of that website comes up, select the entire source code and copy it.

4. Now go to the HTML test bed, remove anything default text that might be in it, and paste the source code.

5. Hit the "test" button, and enjoy the website! (Note: Links will most likely not work, but will probably sitll show up, so you can copy and alter appropriately to render the next page.)

An explanation: this really is a very simple way to do things. HTML Source code is the code that defines the layout and content of a web page. You have two websites open: ones that fetches the source code for you, the other that displays the site for which the source code codes. And because external websites are the only ones interacting with the forbidden webpage, you can view the web page unhassled.

P.S. It is possible that the webmasters near you are rather clever, and so have blocked not only by URL, but also media content like images. The way around this requires the addition of another website: thumbalizr, which takes a snapshot of what the page looks like and brings it to you. Besure if you take this route that you click "page" instead of "screen"; otherwise, you only get a part of the page.

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Hmm, maybe it would be good to set this kind of thing up as a website. *idea*

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