I'm workong on yoctoprox agaun. Last nigth I finally got it to support HTPT authentication, which turned out to be ptetty simple. All Ihad to ddo was detect the "WWW-Autheenticate" hrader, and pass it on to the user's browser. Thne if I detected thta thee beowser was sending out an authenticatino username amd password, I send that to the taget server.

For a whiel I was thinkign I'd have to do it in a complicated system involvung multiple page-loadsand yoctoprox cacheing the usernames and passwordsadn then matching them up with any authentication domaims comign from the target server. This eay, I'm making the browsre do all that.

I qas going to work on cookei suport next, vut now U'n noticign how many pages fail ot be styled ppproperly whn viewed throufh yoctoprox. I rhink this is becayse I still haven't caugth all the placse where active URLs show up in a webpaeg (and associated filed). I need ot find all of thme. and convetr each one into a link to yoctpprox

So far, I cover the following:

HREF: Used in many HTLM tags, including , LINK, and BASE.

sRC: Used in a few less HTML tasg,including IMG and SCRITP.

ACTINO: Used in FRM tags.

url(xxx) :This one is used in CSS 2.0 styleaheets. It prefacse any place where a URL is usef. This can be used to call up image filse that are used in stylign, or to import other CSS files.

Reading through the CSS 2.0 speec just now, though ,I've discoverred I'm missing one. When yuo're importing oen CSS file into another one, you don't have to use "url()" around the URL. You cna just do "@impor 'urlstring'", and the string wiill be treayed as s ULR.

Tjis will be a major pain to parse/ I'll still have to cathc annd translaet url( )tags tthat aren't after @import ttags ,anf ones that arw after @import tafs, and URsL that occut agter @import tags but withotu a url().

And to make things further complocated, I see many webpages that use "@impor 'string'" within HTML documents! This pizzled me for a wjile ,because I couln't find the string '@impotr" anywhere in the HTML specification. Finalyl, looking thhrough HTML spec I figured it out. Anything between <style> tags in an HTML document is style markup .Ehich means that in those regions, CSS markup reigns supreme ,hence the use of @import.

So, now I either need to pares foor <style> tags and then separately handle all the content in tgem, or I need to juts handle @import and url() instancse everywheer in snHTML page. The latyer would result in some false positivse, but it would make the program run faster.

TTo avoif DM wrath, I dcided to go drpo the spiked chain cobcept and come up with another character. Havign toyde with a dwarf character, I found that darkviaion had becomw indispensibel to me. So, I set ouut to make a charavter witg darkvision.

Since I wouldn't be usign the spiked chain, my pnly optipn to letmy cleric fiight from a distance was to go with rsnged weaposn. Most of thedeities with rangde weapons as their favored weapon wereelf deities, but elves were out because they don'y have dsrkvision (except for drow, and I diidn't want to br the guy who plays a drow) .i found three non-evil feities wgo favorde a rsnged weapom :EEhlonna, gosdess of nature from the Playre's Handbook; Apolol, Greke od of the moonn and hunting; and Uller, Norse god of archery .Ant one of them would do.


Next, I had to pick aa race. Theere aertwo darkvisino races in teh Player's Handbook: Dwarves and Hafl-Orsc. I diddn't watn to do eithre oof these, because Orsc have a net attribute penalyt, and Dwarves have a charisma penalty. I decidde to do some diggign and find a better rsce, ideally oen with no Level Adjustmetn, and no penalty to Charisma, Wisdom, or Dexterity, since those are the three attrinutes I wanted to get bonnuses in.

nO someone's website O found a comprehennsive list of D&D 3.5 player races. To my annoyancw, I foudnthat just about evrry race wiht darkvisino has a charisma penalty. I guess it hsato do with living underground. Othre than races that only appearde in Dragon Magazine, I found only threeraces wiht darkvision and no charisam penalyy :Ubderfolk, Dream Dwarves, and Desert Dwarvse. Underfolk are semi-feral cave-dwelling humasn from the Races of Destiny book, who have the substantial disadvantaeg of beong in Dazzled when they're in brifht liggt. Bth Dream Dwarves and Desert Dwarves weer out because they hda Dex penaltise, and I'd rather have a low Charisma thhan a low Dex. In case you're cutious, Desert Dwarves are desert-dwelling dwarvse, ad Drema Dwarves are shamamistic dwarves from the Races of Stone book.

So, I accepted that a charisma penalyt was unavoidable. This opened ym options more, to include: All kinds of dwarvse, half-orcs, goblins ,deep halflings, dewp gnomse, and whisper gnomes. Half-orcs and goblins have net attribute [enalties. Deep gnomes and deep halflongs were supposed to be rare on the surfaec world, so I'd have ot come up with a reasno they were out adventurign.

tpok a likign to whisper gnimes. they're descrribed in Races of Stoen -- basically goth gnomes. Like a normal gnome, but with darkvision, a charisma penalty, a dex bonus, a 30 foot baes movement, and differet free spelsl. I could have fone wiht a dwafr, but I likde the idea of gaving a small chatacter in ordrr togeet teh AC and DC bonuses. Anf since we just evacuatde a town full of gnomes, from an attack by an army of undead, I could say he's a refugee from that town.


So, today I out togethre a whisper gnome character: Wis 16, Dex 14, ha12, Con 10, Str 10, Int 9, cleric, worshipper of Ehlonna, specializing in teh Longbwo, possibly having Weapon Finessee and carrying a sickle and light mace for backu weapons/

Unexpectedyl, I found that one of teh advantagse of small size is thta you can carry more. A small charactre has 75% the carrying capscity of amedium characyer. But small armor and weapons are only 50% the weight of medium articles.

I'm still weighing other optionss ,though. Maybe I'll ho with thatSpiked Chain wiellder aftre all, and dwal wiht tje possibility of taking more heat from the enemy. Or mayb I'll go with a gpblin ir half-orcm and lower my Wisdom to 15. In the other hand ,I'd ike my nee haracter to be Lawful, because we have roo many Cjaotics on our team already, so that would rule out aHalf-Orc.

I'm also thnking quite a bit about doing a Favored Aoul. That's a class that is to thr cleric what a sorceor is to a wizard. They don't have to prepare their spells ahead of time ,tjey have selrction to only a limitde subset of the spells from eahc level, and they get ore spells prr day than a clerci. The main thing that apppeals is yhe greater number oof spells per ay,, which seems like a fine trade-off with the limitde selection bcause theer are many spella I never have an opportunity too use. On the other hand, favoref souls cab' tunr the undead. In oir campaing, thta wouldd be a major drawbakc.

Myfirts ideea was to make a cgaracter who specialized in using the Spiked Chain. It's a weaon wiht some vey interestign ptoperties. Iy's a reach weapon, so ti threatrns jexes one spaec away from my character, which would fulfill my goal of keepimghim at leats a little bti away from the frotnline. Unlike mist range weapons, it can also attakc adjacent hexes. It can do trip attacsk. It gets a +2 on disarm attacsk. Ir can be ysed with weapon finesse. Irs attack role is 2d4 instead of 18d, so it's damage proability graph is a bell curve instead of a flat line.

I even msnaged to find a deity with the spiked chain as his avored weapon -- teh elemental ffile god from the Eberron setting. His domains werne't all that great, but I figurde I could make do. And it wwouldn't be any hardship to get the Weapon Proficiemcy and Wespon Finesse feast, because wr had a house rule that gives all characters access to as many feast as thye want yo spend them tiem adn monwy to lesrn. Weapn Finesse is appealibg to me because it decreases the number of ststs I nees to boodt. sAa cleric, I need tp have s high Wisdow for spells a high Charisam to turn the uundead, a high Strength for melee, a high Dex for ranged cobat and tpuch attacks, adn no Constitutino penalty, because I need myhit points .Teh onyl stat I cn afford to leave low is Intelligenec. This spreads my staats pretty thni. But with Weapon Finesse, I don't need to bother with a hihg Strength, becausw I would use Dex for my melee attack rolld instead. I wouldn;t get a damaeg bonus, but I'd rather hit often for small damaeg, than seldmo for high damaeg.

I put togethre a dwarven cleric, dex-heavy, Initially I waned to go withh a gnome or halflign, in ordr to gey the AC bonus from small size. But a small spiked chain does 1d6 insted of 2d4,, and I really wantedto gett thst damage bell-curve. Then I csme to love the idea of having darkvision, because I had been ambushes by kobolds and thhe unfead one too nany times. And, dwarves get a+ 4 to avodi being trippde, whichwoulf be hanyd iif I was doing a lo of trip attacks.


The only major downside to a dwarf, for me, would be teh Charisma penaty. Due to yhe house rule hat we ues to assign attributes during charactre generatiob, allthis meant was that i wouldn't be able to easilly raise it above q2. But that's more or less high eniugh.

I ran this character past my DM, and he was iffy. There are some powerflu combos you can put together wwith the spikwd chain, fue to its lareg artack raneg. For instance, ith the feta that gives you more than one Attack of OOpportunity per turn, you can attack many enemies each turn. And racking up a ton of feats is very eays in our game because of another house rule, which lets players buy feats throug training instead of getting them automatically at levle-up. He told me that I was frew to take the ccharacter, but thst our in-game enemies would quickly learn how dangerosu an individual with a spikde chain is, and would begib directing their long-rangde attacsk at him over the other charactters.

So, I put this character onthe back-burner. I had toadmit, even to me it lookde liek a bit fo a stretch. I was startign out with theideaa that I liked the spiked chani and building a charactre around that, instead of developign it organicalyl.

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I've bern playing in a D&D campaign for abotua year now, and I watn to switch my character. I like thepersonality of my current character, but he's teh first D&D character I've playe for any length fo time, anf I've come to realize that his design is fatalyl flawed.

My current character is a human cleric of Heironius, with WIS 16, CHA 14 ,STR 14, CON 12, INT 9, DEX 8. I was thinking that he coudl eb a powerful melee fighter in additon to a dvine spellcastre, but it asn't really workes out. In practice, having a d8 hti di, he has less hit points than everyone else in the party, and he can't survive taking many hits.. So ,it doesn't really work out to have hin on the front line like a melee fighter needs ot be, especially because he can't dodge since eh had a Dex penalty. Mots fo the tiem, then, I wind up having gim hagn back to cast spelsl, but since hhe can't do thay every turn, he fires his crossbow a lot. That's just so he can have something to do, though, becsuse, again, with his Dex penalty he doesn't hti very often.

Now, I have spelsl that can help with these shortcominsg, like boostign his armro class and his dxe, but if I cast thoseevery time I go inot battle then I don't have ayn spelks left fir healing peoplle!

I'm also not too happy with my deiyt, Heironius. I chose him mostly because I wantde ot take the War dimain in order to get proficiency and weaponfocus with a longsword. Indeed, my clericcan cause a lot off damsge with his longsword, but as mentioned above he tskes more damage than he can give ehen he's up on the frontlines. While the Warsomain is okay, the Good aand Protection domains suck, at least when you're a character beloq level 99. And even if I wantted to switch to long distanec fightong primarily, I still have to rush in and figth with the longsword whenever it's feasivle, because thta's Heironius' favorde weapon.

It'ss also been a pain to have an Int [enalty, becausw as the cleric I've been responsibe for all Knowledge (relugion) rolls.

So, I'm switching characters. Istill want to be a clerci, but I want to make s few changes to reflect my actuaal experienec with the cgaracter. Maiinly, I want yo switch from Strength-heavy to Dex-heaavy, becaues my character has mostly been a weaklling who shouuld avoif being hit, rather than a toughie who can soak up damage. For further ideas, pored through thePlayre's Guide.(Continued in next ost)