Re: [squid-users] Squid As banner advertise

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Antony Stone wrote:

> That requires inserting <a href=http://....><img src=....></img</a> tags into
> the html stream in some intelligent place so that the advert appears where
> you want it to on the page.
>
> I cannot image any software capable of doing that in a useful way.

There is many who have attempted, and close to equally as many who have
failed or did not get the functionality they desired without disrupting
Internet browsing in ways which does not makes the users very unhappy.
Modifying "page layout" using a proxy is far from an easy task (the
"intelligent place" question above is the most tricky one, the technical
implementation of the answer to that question is not as tricky)

It is administratively manageable to have such solutions in environments
where free Internet access is provided and where the user is not in a
position to demand that all web sites actually work as they do when using
a paid Internet access. It should however be warned that very many
Internet content providers consider modifications of their page layour
including addition of ad banners a copyright violation, so if you plan
this kind of service I advice to seek council from your legal advisor to
discuss the possible legal implications of modifying others content.
Please note that many content providers includes the use of frames for
linking to their content as modification of their web pages.

What can be done relatively easily and probably without the legal mess is
to set up a system where a banner page is presented at the start of the
browsing session and maybe periodically while browsing. The absolutely
easies way of doing this is by using a proxy.pac script, but if you do not
have control over the browser settings then this is relatively easily done
via a redirector helper that keeps track of the users session (by keeping
a small database/registry of the active IP addresses or user names) and
when suitable do a browser redirect to the banner page and including the
originally requested URL as a parameter to this page allowing for a
"Continue" button on the banner page.

Regards
Henrik
Received on Tue Nov 04 2003 - 09:12:44 MST