1st Try: Page Explorer

[nospam@thanx (Ralf S. Engelschall)]

Hello HTML Hackers,

because WML's wml::des::imgdot already has the ability to render the usually
transparent 1pt dot-images as red ones when -DDEBUG=1 is used, I thought it
would be useful to be able to browse any page in this mode.

Now I've created my first try for a Page Explorer as a CGI proxy script:

    http://en1.engelschall.com/sw/wml/pe/

Enter the URL of your favorite webpage you want to explore, select the amount
of exploration level and then have a look into the depths of the page.
Currently the page explorer is slow because every file (including images) have
to be proxied over it. But hey, it's a prototype and never says you should
surf around the world with it. Although you can, i.e. the Page Explorer
automatically rewrites any contained hyperlinks over it, you can actually
surf, i.e. subsequent pages are still under control of the Page Explorer!

Now the big question: Why has he written this beast?  <grins> I'm currently
creating some slides for a Webdesign presentation and need some ways to
explain how webpages work 1998. So, I need to present a snapshot of
www.whatever.com in original and one containing the display various Page
Explorer levels show. This way the viewers can see (step by step) how the page
internally works.

Currently the following levels are defined:

Level 0: Rewrite all URLs to go through Page Explorer
Level 1: Replace all transparent 1pt dot-images with a red image
Level 2: Replace all border=0 attributes with border=1
Level 3: Remove any background images and
         Replace all non-transparent images with a blank one
         showing only the dimensions and image type
Level 4: Completely remove all color attributes

Please give me some feedback on how this beast should be enhanced so it is
even more useful to explore your pages or the pages of other webdesigners.

Greetings,
                                       Ralf S. Engelschall
                                       rse@engelschall.com
                                       www.engelschall.com
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