How to make ASP.NET HTML code not viewable to clients ( users)

Question

I am wondering are there any standard mechanisms available to protect the asp.net asp code in the client browser ? I found some references to Windows script encoders. Question is, are these script encoders encodes both aspx and code behind source ? If aspx is encoded with the Windows script encoders then how client browsers can decode it? Are they aware of the encoding algorithms ?

Or can we control the client browsers ( IE, Firefox, Chrome etc) to disable the view source option in the Tasks Menu when web site a loaded in them?

Any pointers will be appreciated.

Answer 1

The HTML code generated on a webpage is by definition public. It has to be accessible to the browser for it to be able to render the page properly. You will not find a reliable solution to hide the view source option in browsers.

To explain the basics a little bit :

When you create a page, you write markup in your .aspx file and some c# source code in the .aspx.cs file. The c# code is the server side code, which means that it is executed on the server (as opposed to, say, javascript which is executed directly in the client's browser -- client side).

When a page request is executed, the ASP.NET engine executes the server side code, and also executes the asp tags that you wrote in the .aspx page (for example : <asp:Button runat='server'... /> . It then spits out HTML code (this is a very simplified version of what actually happens).

The client's browser only ever gets the HTML (and it will not see the C# code nor any of asp markup code which is used to generate your page).

As I said before, the HTML generated is, and will always be public. There is nothing you can do to reliably hide it.