How to Screw Your ISP

What you do

It's pretty simple:

Press "Start".

The countdown time is decided by the selected radio button, changing the button resets the clock to the new amount.

The "Stop" button will stop the clock. Use the "Start" button will start the clock again.

What it does

This page loads Yahoo's random link into the bottom frame at user-selected intervals.

I built this for myself, after switching to a provider whose service is better than my previous provider in every way except for timed access. Since I'm not alone in this annoyance, I offer this as a solution. Please bookmark this site and send it anyone who might benefit from it.

How it works

Using JavaScript, this page counts down the selected interval and when done, loads a page from Yahoo's Random link into the bottom frame.

The actual script can be seen by viewing the document source of the top frame. Since the script is mostly number manipulations, and therefore kind of boring, I decided not to explain it.

Problems

Occasionally, Netscape returns an error while trying to get a page. Unfortunately, there is no way for JavaScript to trap this error, and therefore, JavaScript is unable to respond to the error dialog. If you get an error requiring you to click "OK", the page won't be able to continue until the dialog is cleared.

One solution is to use a shorter time interval, the other is to get a piece of shareware that automatically clears dialog boxes. I know several are available for the Mac, I'm sure there must be a way to do the same on PCs.

If you have Netscape set to alert you when a cookie is set, that dialog will also stop JavaScript from loading pages. Thanks to Bruce Heavin for reminding me of that.

If something else happens, please send a note to: bug@joemaller.com