Disclaimer
Just to let you know, removal of the banner is breaking the Terms of Service set by either web hosting service. This information is provided strictly for educational use. By reading it, you are accepting that you will hold neither the author of this material nor the source from which you received it accountable for your actions or the actions of others that you wish to pass this on to.
Below this disclaimer, I have laid out the specific sections of the Terms of Service for both web services which you might want to pay attention to. This information was taken from both sites on January 7, 1999. Using this "banner killer" code that follows is most likely in direct violation of the Terms of Service for both sites.
Tripod's Terms of Service: "Tripod places a legal disclaimer at the bottom of all pages within the Membership area of Tripod." (This is the pop-up banner that you get on all tripod pages.) "Removal of that disclaimer or any additional information placed along with the disclaimer is grounds for removal of that page and termination of Tripod Membership." And of course, this is our "banner killer" code that we are going to implement.
If you wish to view the entire body of Tripod's Terms of Service, go to their feedback page and submit the form with the "Problem" field changed to "Terms Of Service/Privacy" or send them an e-mail asking them to send you a copy of it.
Geocities' Terms of Service: Page Content Requirements section: "In return for all the great services we offer, there are only two main requirements that we ask of our Homesteaders:"
1. "We ask that you either place a customizable GeoGuide on top of your pages or support the GeoPops Program.""
2. "We ask that you not interfere with the transparent Watermark that resides on the corner of all your GeoCities pages."
If you wish to view the entire body of Geocities' Terms of Service, go to their Terms of Service page on their website or send them an e-mail asking them to send you a copy of it.
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The Banner Killer Code
Now that we've gotten this far, I'm going to show you how to disable the banners for both Tripod and Geocities sites.
Tripod
When a page is uploaded to a tripod server, the banner/advertisement text is inserted into your HTML code. It is placed near the top of the page right after the <HEAD> tag. An example is as follows:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<!--Begin JavaScript roadmap code... etc., etc. -->
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
function TripodShowPopup()
{blah blah blah}
<!--End the annoying banner code-->
<TITLE>My Cool Page</TITLE>
...page contents, etc...
So, the way to defeat this is to figure out a way to disable the JavaScript code without hurting the contents of your page. Just add the text that is in red in order for it to work:
<HTML>
<NOSCRIPT>
<HEAD>
</NOSCRIPT>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!-- Hide this code from older browsers --
//-- that don't recognize the SCRIPT tag --
document.write("<HEAD>");
//-- End code hiding
-->
</SCRIPT>
<TITLE>My Cool Page</TITLE>
...page contents, etc...
What happens is that the advertisement text is placed inside of a <NOSCRIPT> tag which essentially nullifies the JavaScript banner code, and then the real <HEAD> tag is written with JavaScript afterwards so the HTML code is not missing anything. If in the case that JavaScript is disabled on a person's browser or that their browser doesn't support JavaScript, the <NOSCRIPT> code will kick in and the <HEAD> tag inside it will be written, and the following JavaScript banner code won't work anyway.
Incase you didn't understand this explanation... this code doesn't actually remove Tripod's banner code, it just disables from being viewed.
Geocities
Geocities' advertisement is even more annoying than Tripod's. With Tripod's popup banner, you have the option to close it, but Geocities has its "GeoBranding" which causes a "watermark" stay at the bottom of your browser while scrolling up and down the page. This can become quite annoying.
...page contents, etc...
</BODY>
</HTML>
<!-- <SERVICE NAME="watermark"> -->
<DIV CLASS="GeoBrandingV2" ID="GeoBrandingV2" etc. etc. ></DIV>
<!-- </SERVICE> -->
How do you get around this? Well, the answer is fairly simple. It's only one line of code...
...page contents, etc...
</BODY>
</HTML>
<NOSCRIPT>
That's it!!! It's that simple! When you write an HTML tag (e.g. <TagName>), all the following content will be effected by that tag until you close the tag (e.g. </TagName>) if it works to format the content. There are many tags which don't have an effect on the content such as <A NAME="a section name"> and others, but you don't need to be concerned with this.
Getting back to the code... when you write a <NOSCRIPT> tag, all the content that follows will only be written to the page if JavaScript is disabled or the browser doesn't support JavaScript. Since the watermark uses JavaScript, it won't work if it is only to be displayed when a browser doesn't have JavaScript working. Much like the Tripod code... the code just nullifies the Geocities' watermark code.
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Well, I hope you've learned something from this.
Until next time...
Strider
Where there's a will, there's a way.