Version 2.1


NetCloak

User's Guide


"Dynamic Web Sites...

...No Programming Required"


Cumulative Effects of Commands

It is extremely important to remember that the <SHOW> command will never cause a <HIDE> and vice-versa. For instance <SHOW_DOMAIN 123.45> will turn showing on for those in the domain "123.45", but it will not hide text from those outside the domain.

Think of the text of your document as a stream of information going through a faucet. When you use a conditional <SHOW> command, you are saying "turn the faucet on if this is true" but you are not saying "turn the faucet off if it is not true". The same rule applies to <HIDE>.

What this allows you to do is use the commands in a cumulative way. This is best seen by an example:

<SHOW>
Here is the first line, visible to everyone.
<HIDE_DOMAIN some.domain>
This line is concealed from users in "some.domain".
<HIDE_DOMAIN another.domain>
Hidden from "another.domain" AND "some.domain".
<SHOW>
This last line can be seen by everyone.

If we had wanted line 5 to be hidden ONLY from "another.domain", the HTML would have been...

<SHOW>
Here is the first line, visible to everyone.
<HIDE_DOMAIN some.domain>
This text is concealed from users on "some.domain".
<SHOW><HIDE_DOMAIN another.domain>
Hidden from the domain "another.domain" ONLY.
<SHOW>
This last line can be seen by everyone.

The extra <SHOW> command "turns the HTML on" before the <HIDE> command shuts it back of for the desired users. This can get a little confusing, but there is a simple rule.

When you want to specify "Hide only from ...", use:

<SHOW><HIDE ...>

And when you want to specify "Show only to...", use:

<HIDE><SHOW ...>

This is very important, as the next example shows...

<SHOW>
This line is viewable by the world!
<SHOW_DAY SAT SUN>
This line is ALSO visible to the world. The show command didn't do anything!

In this example, since everyone could already view the HTML text, <SHOW> didn't do anything. To do what we want, which is to show the line only on the weekends, this example should be...

<SHOW>
This line is viewable by the world!
<HIDE><SHOW_DAY SAT SUN>
This line is visible ONLY on the weekend.
<SHOW>

By hiding first, we block access from everyone and then let people see the text ONLY when we want.

Why does NetCloak work like this?

Because, despite the fact that it takes a little getting used to, it gives you a lot more flexibility. For example, let's say you wanted to have a section of your document available only to your company all the time. The rest of the world could see the section during non-business hours only.

In this case, you could do this...

<SHOW>
This line is always available to everyone
<HIDE>
<SHOW_DOMAIN my.local.domain>
<SHOW_DAY SAT SUN>
<SHOW_TIME 18 19 20 21 22 23 00 01 02 03 04 05>
This line is available to my local users all the time, and to the rest of the world during off hours.

This example first hides the HTML text, then turns viewing back on for each specific case.

See the section on the "except variation" for more on combining the effect of two commands. This allows you to do things like show HTML on a certain day and only at a certain time.


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