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OLD POSTS
Group: alt.discuss.webtv.technical Date: Tue, Mar 14, 2000 From: ulTRAX@webtv.net wtv-tricks: the all purpose service wtv-tricks.... speaking now of the class of WTV URLs beginning with wtv-tricks and not the WTV-TRICKS site, are pretty unique. It was designed as a backup incase of browser failure. If worse came to worse, and one could not access wtv-mail or wtv-home, one could use wtv-tricks. Tricks are also unique in that they was designed to work off of web pages... say if the old Excite Search Engine was not located at WNI.... it could still have a wtv-tricks:/home link to get us back to our home page. But what makes tricks fascinating is that it's on the client:showservices list. Therefore all wtv-tricks fetches are just requests to the WNI servers. Yet, all it seems to do is force some other service, such as mail or home, to respond. If I go to wtv-tricks:/home I get it's url as wtv-home:/home. It seems tricks was designed as a backup IP which merely acts as a conduit to other servers. In the summer 98 upgrade WNI went out of its way to kill the wtv-xxx:/urls but they could not touch wtv-tricks. I once suggested testing wtv-tricks words to see if we could discover other URLs we did not know about. I don't think any were discovered in this manner. This may indicate the list of permissible commands is short. But maybe it's not. Why would WNI create a backup function that only accessed a small group of URLs? What good does a backup do getting us to our home page during a browser failure if there were no other commands we could use while there? All this is to say I think maybe we should look again at wtv-tricks:/xxxxx.... we should look for patterns and try to predict new URLs. We should also look to form more complex wtv-tricks commands. Who knows ;-)
Group: alt.discuss.webtv.technical Date: Tue, Mar 14, 2000 From: ulTRAX@webtv.net Re: wtv-tricks: [chat] The quick URL to chat is wtv-tricks:/chat. It take you to the wtv-chat:/chat page. If you go to TCity you end up on wtv-chat:/talk-city. This seemed to be an easy test... Could I get to the same URL using wtv-tricks:/talk-city? The answer is no... one gets those ubiquitious "tech error" popups one gets when guessing tricks URLs. So I tried wtv-tricks:/chat?talk-city But that only brought me back to the chat page. wtv-tricks:/chat/talk-city and other varients led to more tech errors. Maybe something like wtv-tricks:/chat?service=talk-city ? Just thinkin' aloud.
Group: alt.discuss.webtv.technical Date: Tue, Mar 14, 2000 From: ulTRAX@webtv.net Re: wtv-tricks: [redirect code] This code is interesting.... it takes you to the hacking NG. wtv-tricks:/redirect-news?path=alt.discuss.webtv.hacking But this one will not take you to TCity. wtv-tricks:/redirect-chat?path=talk-city Maybe the redirect code only works with "news" because "news:XXX" is active anyway. So what about mailto:? But there is no wtv-tricks:/mailto and wtv-tricks:/redirect-mail?path=inbox gives a technical error. I wish I remembered where I got that redirect code. I wonder what else it can do
Group: alt.discuss.webtv.technical Date: Wed, Mar 15, 2000 From: ulTRAX@webtv.net Re: wtv-tricks: (interchangeability) Looking at all of wasdiscovered wtv-tricks URLs I knew they were they came from.... the original Dec 96 upgrade notice. But those pages and images were wtv-content NOT wtv-tricks wtv-content:/demo_1.1/more.html (intro page). See http://members.tripod.com/ulTRICK/content.html for the old URLs. Of course there may have been another way to access them other than the old Upgrade letter. That's why I asked wasdiscovered if he found or deduced them. I should add that Content was one of those wtv-services that was left active on web pages... though sporadically. Aside from the interchangeability of file://romcache URLs.... and these content/tricks URLs, there's at least one other example. On my archive copy of the WTV-TRICKS index page... the original red ribbon was a wtv-home URL. On a hunch I changed it to wtv-tricks:/Favorites_bg.jpg and it worked. Given this interchangeability, the redirect codes, and a failure to guess more wtv-tricks URLs, and I'd say this area may be worth further exploration.
Group: alt.discuss.webtv.technical Date: Wed, Mar 15, 2000 From: ulTRAX@webtv.net Re: wtv-tricks: (interchangability2) Here's another example of interchangability. Wasdiscovered posted this wtv-tricks:/help?topic=Index&subtopic=Main&page=1&showLinksToSettings=&showTryIt= But the referrer from the page is actually: wtv-guide:/help?topic=Index&subtopic=Main&page=1&showLinksToSettings=&showTryIt=
Group: alt.discuss.webtv.technical Date: Wed, Mar 15, 2000 From: ulTRAX@webtv.net Re: wtv-tricks: (prediction) This isn't a big leap but it may help understand the principles involved in wtv-tricks as a substitute fetch method. The original index page for the 1.1 Upgrade feature list was wtv-content:/demo_1.1/more.html A simple substitution from wtv-content:/demo_1.1/more.html to wtv-tricks:/demo_1.1/more.html did not work... even though it did when I converted wtv-home:/images/Favorites_bg.jpg to wtv-tricks:/images/Favorites_bg.jpg But.... converting wtv-content:/demo_1.1/more.html to wtv-tricks:/content?demo_1.1/more.html did work. However while wtv-tricks:/chat is the the same as wtv-chat:/chat I can not just take the "chat" service and write it as a file name. wtv-chat:/talk-city will not convert to wtv-tricks:/chat?talk-city So the question remains, whether there are some general principles involved in constructing wtv-tricks URLs that we can modify.... or whether the tricks servers filter out all but pre-approved URLs.
Group: alt.discuss.webtv.technical Date: Wed, Mar 15, 2000 From: ulTRAX@webtv.net Re: wtv-tricks: (talk city) Here are some URLs I tried trying to get to wtv-chat:/talk-city by modifying a tricks URL. Oh well. GOES TO MAIN CHAT PAGE wtv-tricks:/chat?talk-city wtv-tricks:/chat?path=talk-city wtv-tricks:/chat?path?redirect=talk-city wtv-tricks:/chat?redirect=talk-city wtv-tricks:/chat?redirect?path=talk-city wtv-tricks:/chat?redirect=chat/talk-city TECH ERRORS wtv-tricks:/chat-chat?path=talk-city wtv-tricks:/chat-redirect? wtv-tricks:/chat-redirect?path=talk-city wtv-tricks:/redirect-chat? wtv-tricks:/redirect-chat?path=talk-city wtv-tricks:/redirect-chat?redirect?path=talk-city wtv-tricks:/content?path=talk-city