Looking for browser with "HTML Preview" feature

  • Thread starter Thread starter wylbur37
  • Start date Start date
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wylbur37

Normally with most browsers, when you type in the URL of a website you
wish to visit, your browser sends a request to the server of that
website, passing it your current IP address. That server then sends
the HTML source code back to your computer, and your browser then
"renders" (i.e., executes) the HTML code, and displays the results on
the screen.

If there's any malicious code embedded in the HTML (whether written in
Javascript or otherwise), you probably won't even notice (or won't
know about it until it's already done, when it's too late to stop it).

What I would like is for the browser, BEFORE it renders the HTML code,
to display the source code of the web page about to be rendered,
thereby offering me a chance to visually inspect the HTML code; and if
it looks OK, I'll tell the browser to go ahead and render the code;
and if something looks suspicious, I'll tell the browser *NOT* to
render it.

Is there a browser (preferably a freeware one) that has this
functionality?






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Normally with most browsers, when you type in the URL of a website you
wish to visit, your browser sends a request to the server of that
website, passing it your current IP address. That server then sends
the HTML source code back to your computer, and your browser then
"renders" (i.e., executes) the HTML code, and displays the results on
the screen.

If there's any malicious code embedded in the HTML (whether written in
Javascript or otherwise), you probably won't even notice (or won't
know about it until it's already done, when it's too late to stop it).

What I would like is for the browser, BEFORE it renders the HTML code,
to display the source code of the web page about to be rendered,
thereby offering me a chance to visually inspect the HTML code; and if
it looks OK, I'll tell the browser to go ahead and render the code;
and if something looks suspicious, I'll tell the browser *NOT* to
render it.

Is there a browser (preferably a freeware one) that has this
functionality?
Click to expand...

You must have a lot of free time to be able to read all the source code
before rendering it!

FWIW I use Avant Browser as it gives me the option to disable almost
everything and includes blockers for ads, popups, flash, ActiveX etc. Turn
everything off and then if you want more you can enable individual items.
<www.avantbrowser.com>
 
wylbur37 said:
Normally with most browsers, when you type in the URL of a website you
wish to visit, your browser sends a request to the server of that
website, passing it your current IP address. That server then sends
the HTML source code back to your computer, and your browser then
"renders" (i.e., executes) the HTML code, and displays the results on
the screen. ....
What I would like is for the browser, BEFORE it renders the HTML code,
to display the source code of the web page about to be rendered,
thereby offering me a chance to visually inspect the HTML code; and if
it looks OK, I'll tell the browser to go ahead and render the code;
and if something looks suspicious, I'll tell the browser *NOT* to
render it.

Is there a browser (preferably a freeware one) that has this
functionality?
Click to expand...

I think someone would get pretty tired of reviewing HTML with that
approach. If you just want to snoop at a few specific sites, that's not
hard to do. If you were running Linix, you could just run "wget" which
is a batch command that fetches web pages and will pick up any
associated stuff it identifies by scanning tags within the page. (It's
not standard but most of the distributions include it). Or, you could
run Lynx, which still displays the page, but in text mode so it's
unlikely to do anything dangerous. You can find either of these built
for Windows if you do a search.

In reality, there are only a few things that are risky, and most
browsers will provide reasonable safety against them if configured
properly. The most common risk these days is JavaScript, and that can
easily be disabled. ActiveX on Windows is also dangerous, of course, but
for that reason anyone who is at all security conscious disables or at
least requires confirmation before allowing any ActiveX to be installed.
Java is a risk as well but is inherently more secure than ActiveX
because the JVM enforces security. There may be flaws in the security
implementation or model, though, and so Java as well can be turned off.

If you're worried about IE, you should take a look at FireFox. It
provides good controls for controlling Java and JavaScript and includes
various other security oriented features e.g. the ability to disable
images that don't come from the same site as the page itself (not
particularly dangerous, but it's a common tactic for tracking web
visitors from a central web site). The Mozilla browsers or Netscape 7
provide similar capabilities (though Netscape 7 is long overdue for an
update).

If you're handy, you could always write a FireFox extension that would
let you display the HTML for a web page, too.
 
| ....
| If you were running Linix, you could just run "wget"
| which is a batch command that fetches web pages
| ....

Jim ....

wget is also available for Windows
and I use a version under Win98 ....

I don't have a link handy, but a bit of Google-izing
should turn it up ...

Generic example usage for downloading/saving a single page ....

wget http://www.someWhere.com/index.html -O someWhere.html
 
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