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The latest release of Microsoft's VBScript and JScript
language engines provide support for script encoding. Script
encoding helps protect the intellectual property you have in your
scripts by making them illegible. We introduce you to this new
feature and explain how you can use it to protect your scripts.
To encode your script, you need to download and install the
Script Encoder tool from Microsoft's web-site. You can find the tool
at Microsoft's Scripting Site. This tool encodes your script for use
with the latest language engines from Microsoft. The encoded scripts
only run with this language engine thereby limiting this feature
mostly to Internet Explorer 5.0 users. All browsers without this
language engine will ignore the script block.
The script encoder runs from the command prompt. By default
all scripts on your page are encoded. Any HTML on the page is left
untouched.
To encode scripts on a page you simply run the script
encoder as follows:
SCRENC input.htm output.htm
Below we encode a simple script that displays the current
date and time on the page:
<SCRIPT>
document.write(new Date())
</SCRIPT>
After running the script through the encoder, the script is
encoded and the language is modified to represent this encoding:
<SCRIPT language = JScript.Encode>
#@~^IgAAAA==@#@&NG1Es+xDRS.kD+cxh~9mY+vb#@#@&cAkAAA==^#~@
</SCRIPT>
By default, the entire script is encoding. However, even
though your scripts are encoded, you will often want to include a
copyright notice within the script block. By controlling where the
script encoder should start encoding with the "**Start Encode**"
comment you can ensure you leave important comments in the script's
header.
For example, to preserve a copyright when encoding the
script:
<SCRIPT>
//Copyright© 1999. InsideDHTML.com, LLC All rights
reserved.
//**Start Encode**
document.write(new Date())
</SCRIPT>
Now the copyright is left intact and the script following
the copyright is encoded.
Encoded scripts only run on browsers that have the 5.0 or
later release of Microsoft's scripting engines. The 5.0 engine comes
with Internet Explorer 5.0 and can be optionally installed by the
user with previous versions of Internet Explorer. For the most part,
this feature is only usable with scripts targeting Internet Explorer
5.0. Where script encoding becomes very useful is when combined with
another Internet Explorer 5 feature - behaviors.
Related Hyperlinks
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/
Breaking the Windows Script Encoder
Credits
By Scott Isaacs <http://www.insidedhtml.com>
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