ulTRAX'S ARCHIVE

URL TRICKS



WTV URL ACCESS TRICKS

NOTE: Page design and Entire Site © ulTRAX@webtv.net.


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NOTES: Please notify me of any additions or corrections. NOTE: The Techniques are listed in chronological order... most recent on the top.

Obsolete Tricks have red titles.

Yellow means a Trick may still work depending on your Client version.

If a title is Green, it should still work.

Unfortunately, unless a new access Trick is posted in public, it will be my policy NOT to include them here. WTV actively targets all these direct-access techniques. For information on WTV's apparent motivation please go here.
I would have prefered to put all code in text boxes for easy C&P but several factors interfer with that... one being additional textarea commands.

SSL ACCESS: ulTRAX/January '00

This method used embeds in sig of pages which had WTV URL Links. The difference was that the page had to be on a server that suppported SSL. In doing so the embed would bypass the WNI proxies which might be transcoding ordinary embeds. Instead of using any of the more exotic file extensions, the SSL method could still use the common html extension.

This method was to held in reserve for after the next upgrade... and while it was hinted at, it was never openly discussed or demonstrated. None the less, WNI found a way to kill it sometime in late March.

JS DIRECT ACCESS TOOL: Quikgamer/June '99

The development of the Access Tool proved once again, that WNI may never be able to selectively prevent us from direct access of WTV-URLs. This tool may not work with the Fall '99 Client Upgrades. Just C&P the code from the form below.



INFO ACCESS TECHNIQUE: wasdiscovered/June 99
 This method is a two step process. Once a URL is entered into the form, a button is pressed and you are brought to a cache page. There you hit the INFO button and you are taken to the URL you selected. The method utilizes a "trusted" browser page to access URLs.

Below is the first version of the INFO tool. Since them other varieties have been created, but they all do the same thing.







PAGE BUILDER ACCESS TECHNIQUE: ?/June 99
 This technique used the WTV PageBuilder which was part of the sprin '99 "GRUNGE" server-side upgrade. I',m not sure when this technique was killed. To use it you had to:

1: Have registered for PageBuilder
2: Have a page in the Index... preferrably one that is NOT published.

These are the steps:
1: In the PageBuilder Index click on your unpublished page.
2: Click on "Change Page".
3: Click on the "TITLE" of your page. This should bring you to a page titled "title & description". It has but one form in which to enter data.
4: In this form enter a WTV URL in the following manner.. this one is to delete your Cookies:

"" action="wtv-cookie:/reset" 5: Click on the box

FAV FOLDER IMAGE ACCESS TRICK: Mattman69 (aka Thin-Ice69)/March '99
This code uses the FIND method which most people no longer have after accepting the BugFix Client Upgrade. It is used while in a FAV folder. The number can be changed to access the different images in that folder.
I shortened the code... just remember to let the FIND box go down after you click on it the second time...

FORM METHOD DIRECT ACCESS: spazsparks/July '99
 This Technique has its limitations. For one thing it does not work with all WTV URLs ad it does not work at all on web pages. But it does work in Sigs with some file:// URLs... such as ConnectSetup. That URL can be removed from the code.

SUBJECT/RECENT DIRECT ACCESS: ?/Dec. '98
 This Trick went though a few variations until it was reduced to its simplist form. '<embed src="wtv-something:/xxxxxxx"> This was placed in the Subject area of a post or letter and would not be activated until the letter/post was sent. At that point the reader would have to open the letter/post AND bring up the RECENT box. At that point the command would be embeded there and activated. It was useful for some head-waiter commands which seemed to work differently here than if one used the FIND method. For instance one could get to FLASH using this method while the same head-waiter command would not do so if used in FIND. The limitations of this Trick was that a letter had to be sent for each command... and there was a text limit in the Subject area of 80 characters. Since this trick was abused in the so-called "amnesia" bomb... which unregisted people's boxes... WTV disabled this Trick in the Grunge Server-side upgrade.

TITLE/RECENT DIRECT ACCESS: May 99/?
I don't know if this Trick was discovered before I came up with it... This Trick was a variation of the one above. It used the Title of a ordinary web page to do the same as the Trick above. In the title area of a web page one would put this code
<title> !!! <embed src="wtv-something:/xxxxx>/!!! </title> Note: place XMP tags where the !!!'s are.
The XMP tags allowed the embed command to show up in the Status Bar at the bottom of the page and would be activated when the RECENT box was raised. The advantage to this method was an index page of useful commands could be created and one could mix and match a few commands to see what happened if they were activated simultaniously. This Trick was killed by Grunge in June '99.

SPELLCHECK DIRECT ACCESS TRICK: GothicHoror/May '99
The spring 99 BugFix Client Upgrade killed the FIND Trick. The SpellCheck Trick was a replacement.... Unfortunately, the Grunge server side upgrade also killed SpellCheck.

1: type a misspelled word in your message
2: click on spelling
3: erase everything in the box with the misspelled word
4: put <a href="(WTV-URL here)">anything</a>
5: press enter.
6: when done, press "previous" and there should be a link to your selected wtv-url in the results display box at the top of the page.
7: click on that and it should take you to that wtv-url.

"FIND" METHOD: StereoNexus/December 98
This method used the FIND Box to direct access WTV URLS. The original code was
<form><method="post" action="WTV_URL".>
One simply hits FIND to lower the panel, then FIND again and "enter". This method is up against a 100 character limit in the textfield which some (not all) of us have. A few days after I got this I realized it contained excess code. The shortest version now frees up about 20 extra characters and is simply:
"" action="URL"
. In early February '99 some moles from the Alpha testing groups reported that the FIND technique no longer worked for them. This fear was confirmed when the so-called BugFix CLient Upgrade in Spring '99 killed the FIND method.

BGSOUND ACCESS TO WTV URLs: eprom?/August 98
The Summer 98 Upgrade prevented the use of active WTV links on a HP. But someone discovered that the "BGSOUND" tag could be used instead of "EMBED". This trick worked until the November 98 FUNK Upgrade.

ACCESSING WTV URLs: NG SEARCH TRICK ?/August 98
This was another trick to dierect access WTV URLs after the Summer '98 Upgrade. It simply used an embed code in the NG search box but for it to work, there had to be a space, then a topic.

ACCESSING WTV URLs: MAILTO TRICK: (?)/August 98
This Trick involved setting up a simple MAILTO: command. One could write it out, then send it to themselves to make it active, or later it was discovered it could simply be used in the GoTo box to create a letter. TipTup or Real-Act adapted this code to setup the JS Code Reader in Mail.

mailto:XXXXX?message_url=XXXXX.

That code was to be a key feature of this Site. One could simply click an option on the Code Section and page with the JS Code Reader and and an embed of tha page would be created. Since all the embed links were"live", one could have instant access to all the URLs in that Section. Unfortunately, that ability died with the November 98 FUNK Upgrade.

ACCESSING WTV URLs: MAILTO PHOTO TRICK: ?/August '98
This trick used the mailto: code but instead of using the Subject area, it used the Message _Snapshot area for the URL. This method was not fully explored since the BGSOUND Trick was discovered right about the same time, and it was much more efficient. This Trick no longer worked after the Nov. '98 FUNK upgrade.

mailto:ScrollDown?message_snapshot_url=

"STOCKS" TECHNIQUE: ?/August 98
This was another in a series of tricks to direct access WTV URLs after the Summer 98 "upgrade". It used the Change Stocks box in the "MyWebTV" section. There one could use either an embed or the bgsound command as follows.

<bgsound src="wtv-home:/home:>

This method was widely used to to access DEMO. WTV finally killed this trick with a slight server-side modification in late February '99. That change is not to be confused with the GRUNGE Upgrade of a few months later.

INFO BUTTON TRICK: mattman69/June 98
This was a way to direct access WTV URLs. In one's sig use the following code:

Then while writing a letter, simply hit INFO, then either the CREDIT or INSTRUCTION buttons. This trick no longer worked after the Summer 98 Upgrade but a variation of it was born a year later and still works with the IM upgrade.

JAVASCRIPT IN GOTO BOX: ?/prehistory
According to old-timers like n2Play, who have been with WebTV since the beginning, Javscript was once available in mail and NG postings as HTML is today... that is until the June 97 (1.2) Upgrade. JS was also available in the GoTo Box. To access a WTV URL, one entered the command:

javascript:window.open("wtv-cookies:/list").

To access information about a page, say its URL, one used JS alerts:

javascript:alert(document.location).

As part of WebTV's eternal attempt to prevent us from direct access of WTV URLs, JS was removed from the GoTo box with the Summer '98 1.4/2.2 Client uprades.



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