IE & working offline - how to stop ASP links beings followed?

[bob_smithley]

I have a problem.

We have an Intranet running on IIS, with lots of ASP code.

On the front page, there is a link to a simple ASP app which adds or
removes records from an Access database. It's a "Who's In & Out Board"
- users input their details in a form, Access DB is updated. Users can
also delete records. No password security.

Problem - if users Synchronise the front page on the Intranet and have
a certain value in this IE setting:

"download pages X links deep from this page"

the process of synchronising runs the ASP code and deletes records from
the database. I have stopped caching of the ASP but it doesn't help -
the ASP links are still followed during the synchronising process.

Can I fix this short of disabling Synchronising Favourites in IE?

Thank you

 

[Rob Parsons]

mmm.. my guess would be to change your asp code to accept Posts i/o Gets,
check inside each asp page for a session variable value (username?) and if
empty exit the data update code.
How are you calling your scripts? <a href=myasppage.asp?cmd=Delete

Delete</a> , hardcoded in your html doc?

if you change that to <form action=myasppage.asp method=Post><input
type=submit name=cmd value=Delete></form>
then it wont appear as a link to IE for it to follow.

In your asp pages you have to change request.querystring("cmd") to just
request("cmd")

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

I have a problem.

We have an Intranet running on IIS, with lots of ASP code.

On the front page, there is a link to a simple ASP app which adds or
removes records from an Access database. It's a "Who's In & Out Board"
- users input their details in a form, Access DB is updated. Users can
also delete records. No password security.

Problem - if users Synchronise the front page on the Intranet and have
a certain value in this IE setting:

"download pages X links deep from this page"

the process of synchronising runs the ASP code and deletes records from
the database. I have stopped caching of the ASP but it doesn't help -
the ASP links are still followed during the synchronising process.

Can I fix this short of disabling Synchronising Favourites in IE?

Install a robots.txt file at your root?
(Or is that what you meant for "disabling synchronising?")

Thank you

Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---

 

[bob_smithley]

The synchronising I am referring to is IE's ability to save an offline
copy of a website (Tools menu > Synchronize). I don't think installing
a robots.txt file will help. IE downloads the whole website, X levels
deep (according to the "download pages X links deep from this page"
setting).

The ASP code in question is GenericDB (an open-source set of ASP
scripts to put a database online). The website is down as I guess the
author doesn't maintain it any more.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030322115206/http://genericdb.com/

 

[bob_smithley]

Robert - I spoke to soon. The robots.txt is the answer - I didn't
think IE synchronising would respect robots.txt. Anyway, it fixed my
problem - thank you very much for the suggestion!