Re: Auto Proxy Configuration?

>What I am hopefully trying to do is embed some Java Script or VB Script

>into the main User's Only Page whereby each time a customer hits the
page,
>it will 'refresh' their proxy settings and force the browser to go
through
>my proxy server (which is running on FreeBSD). I'm rebuilding my IEAK
now
>to take care of any new customers; but my problem is I've got several
>thousand existing customers which has an increased priority than any
new
>customers. (Besides, if I'm able to pull this off, any new customers,
>once they hit the User's Only Website will have their proxy settings
>configured bypassing the need for me to rebuild IEAK or even Netscape
for
>that matter.)

I'm setting up a squid cache for my organization and am trying to do the
same thing. We're a Netscape-only shop (so no IE is supported). I'm
writing a Javascript now to do just that. I wanted to do the same thing
-- embed a Javascript into a web page to transparently reset everyone's
proxies. That turns out to be impossible. Reseting preferences requires
privileges beyond what Javascript can normally do. It is possible to
have the Javascript request these priveleges (using a signed script --
you'll have to get a certificate from Verisign or some other agency),
but it won't be transparent to the user. They'll have to grant the
privilege. In addition this only works with Netscape 4.x -- older
versions don't have this capability.

My plan is to write a script for all the Communicator users and have a
link to it from a web page that contains instructions for those using
Netscape 3.x. Since this is such a hassle, I'm going to have the
browsers all use the Automatic Proxy Config option and point to a .pac
file on a web server behind our firewall. Then any future changes should
be transparent to the user. Hopefully I'll only have to do this once.
Once I roll this out, I'm going to shut off port 80 on the firewall a
week later to see who complains :-) and chastise them appropriately.
Netscape has several web pages on doing this sort of thing, but you have
to sort of hunt around for the info.

Security Preferences for Communicator:

http://developer.netscape.com/library/technote/security/sectn3.html

Applying Signed JavaScripts:

http://developer.netscape.com/news/viewsource/goodman_sscripts.html

Hope this helps!
<JL>
Received on Thu Feb 12 1998 - 05:14:27 MST