html,ASP,cfm,nsf

[jino]

Hi,

I am wondering whether we can figure out which language the web page was developed in by looking at the URL? What other parameters (view source??) give out information in this regard?

http://www.mypagemy.com/mypage.nsf/Menu?OpenFrameSet

(fictitious URL I created)

What can you say about this page from looking at this URL?

http://www.tek-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=1246

What is the 'cfm' extension?

Thanks

Jino

 

[manarth]

I am wondering whether we can figure out which language the web page was developed in by looking at the URL?

Well, one can suppose a great deal, but determine nothing.

In TT's example, .cfm indicates Cold Fusion Markup.

Typically, .asp is Microsoft's Active Server Pages, .jsp indicates Java technology, .php suggests a Zend based product.

That said, it's trivial to use a URL rewriting engine to display the URLs you wish to show. For example, the W3C rewrites ALL their URLs to a folder hierarchy. No file extension in sight. There's nothing to stop you running java technology, but rewriting URLs so they all in .html instead of .jsp.

What other parameters (view source??) give out information in this regard?

view source simply shows data transmitted to the browser to allow it to display the page. it doesn't explicitly show the technology used, but developers sometimes leave comments - or other clues in the code - which will give it away.

HTTP Headers will also give away certain information - typically server information. TT, for example, gives a response header "Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0"

Again, this is trivial to spoof. Your Apache server will quite happily pretend to be Microsoft IIS. Not that many people do; there's no real advantage (security through obscurity is not an advantage).


was this aimed at Web content management systems in particular?

<marc>
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