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HOW TO OVERRIDE XOOM's ADS FRAME
by ThanatouAnghelos, 2000
You can dowload some useless articles like
this at the following URL: articles.tahome.cjb.net.
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NOTE FOR XOOM USERS AND ADMINISTRATORS
Please note that ThanatouAnghelos will have not any liability for
any Xoom user that will follow any of the actions descripted in
this document. This document describes only theorically how you can
avoid Xoom's disturbing ads frame that appears on every fucking
page of my site with a bit of hacking.
Of course Xoom is right because the services he offers are
supported economically only thanking to these ads, but it's a bit
boring to see the same thing lots and lots of times... I suggest
you (administrators) to do something like GeoCities (hideable
little advertisement windows docked on the page) or just adding
this frame on the first page. Apart from this, using frames is even
a restrictive action that forces people to upgrade to a more recent
version their browser to be able to browse Xoom' sites.
INTRODUCTION
The Xoom ad banner, as you certnaily noticed if you have some
experience in websites, uses frames. This feature, avaible only
on HTML3-supporting browsers (like Netscape 3 or IE 3 or later
versions), let the author to split the browser's window into two
or more scrollable pieces. This is useful when you make toolbars
or other things that you want to keep visible during the browsing.
Xoom reserves a space of 36 pixels height in the browser's window
to add a little bar where there are some links to Xoom's services
and two mini-banners. The second part of the frame contains the
original HTML page.
To avoid conflicts between the Xoom's reserved area and your files,
when you upload files, the server moves your files into a directory
called _XOOM or _XMCM (it depends on which Xoom service you use:
eg. Xoom.com uses _XMCM, Xoom.it uses _XOOM), so /foo directory
becomes /_XOOM/foo. When you open an HTML file on the Xoom site, eg.
http://members.xoom.com/foo/foo.html, it opens an HTML file that
defines the frame and opens the original file that's located in
http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/foo/foo.html. The same file even
changes the document "on-the-fly" using a JavaScript applet that
finds the links to other pages and verifies if the page is located
at the same site. So, if it finds a link like the following:
http://members.xoom.com/foo2/index.html it changes the link to
http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/foo2/index.html.
HOW TO AVOID THE BANNER: STEP 1 - FRAMES vs. FRAMES
First of all you can create an index.html file that contains a
frame definition like this:
It is basically the same HTML code that defines the Xoom bar,
but it will change the bar with the file that you defined instead of
**TOOLBAR**, and will open the effectively home page that you defined
instead of **DEFAULT**. I suggest you to use as TOOLBAR file a short
list of links on your site, a your own ad banner or simply a blank
document. You can call it as you want: toolbar.html, blank.html,
links.html and so on. The DEFAULT file could be called default.html,
index2.html, or similar.
HOW TO AVOID THE BANNER: STEP 2 - CLEVER LINKS
After that, when you make a link to another HTML page on your site or to
another Xoom member' site, you can add _XOOM or _XMCM (see Introduction)
before the folder name. For example: http://members.xoom.it/tahome/index.html
becomes http://members.xoom.it/_XOOM/tahome/index.html, that is the original
version without frames.
To be sure use: . This overrides the frames.
Anyway, if you follow the first step, this second one is not mandatory if you
use relative references (like "windows\temp\file.tmp" instead of the whole
"c:\windows\temp\file.tmp" if the current directory is "c:\"), as they
automatically refer to the files located in _XOOM subdirectory (so eg.
"articles/index.html" is a relative reference that links to
http://members.xoom.it/_XOOM/tahome/articles/index.html).
However please note that you should always define exactly the URL (I mean
always with the .html file name), because eg.:
members.xoom.it/_XOOM/foo/cool/index.html refers to the original but
members.xoom.it/_XOOM/foo/cool/ refers to the Xoom-ad.ed-framed HTML doc.
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