Backlinks to Any Web Page!
by Ted
Kaehler
1. You must be using Netscape 2.0.x. If you have upgraded to
Netscape 3.0.x, this page will not work.
A fix for this problem was discovered by Ka-Ping Yee
I did a little investigating of why this doesn't normally
work in Netscape 3.0. As it turns out, Netscape prevents the
script from constructing the AltaVista query because the URL
string is "tainted".
I looked at the Netscape documentation and discovered that
the user can enable the "tainting" feature so that
Netscape asks for confirmation rather than flat out aborting
the script.
On Macintosh, you need to use the "ResEdit"
utility to edit the resources in the Netscape application.
Find the resource with type "Envi" and number 128
in the Netscape application and remove the two ASCII slashes
"//" before the "NS_ENABLE_TAINT" text at
the end of the resource.
In Windows 3.1 or 95, you need to
set NS_ENABLE_TAINT=1
In Windows NT, you need to open the System Properties
window from the Control Panel, choose Environment, and add a
variable named "NS_ENABLE_TAINT" with value 1.
In Unix, you need to
setenv NS_ENABLE_TAINT 1
before running Netscape.
With these settings, Ted's backlinks script *WILL* work in
Netscape 3.x. I have tested this in Unix and with Windows NT.
--Ka-Ping Yee, June 15, 1997
2. Click here to make a new window.
3. Browse the web in the new window. (Keep this window open.)
4. Click this button at any time. It will show you all the
pages on the web that have links to the
page in the other window.
Notes
- Your browser must be Netscape Navigator 2.0.x for this to
work (it uses JavaScript). Netscape 3.0 has outlawed the
trick that makes this work.
See above fix
- Do not resize this window or do anything that causes it
to reload. If you do accidentally reload it, you will
later get the error 'other is not defined'. Simply close
your other window, and click 'New Window' again.
- The search covers the 30 million pages known to Alta Vista.
- This currently doesn't work with Netscape running on Unix
systems.
- For more on why backlinks are important, see the Foresight Web Enhancement Project,
and Robin
Hanson's FindCritics page.
- Robin
Hanson simplified this page.
V.1.3.1 15 June 1996. Revised June 18, 1997.
For updates, see the Backlinks Page
at the Foresight Institute.
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