Your post got me to test my idea I've had as a way to do that to see if it would work... Well it works, except a lot of sites restrict you from being able to use it (a security worry). So it's ultimately not as useful as it could be. Yes it's true we can't control the browser directly just through dns, but we can make it load a page with a home button and url field header, and an iframe embedding your browsing page within it. So that as you navigate, the header with the url field and home button stays at the top but the iframe changes pages. The idea being to always be able to quickly go back home, or to any url.
Here's an example of what I mean (and my new default 'captive portal' page):
Code:
<html>
<head><title>YourFrendlyDNS Starting Place!</title>
<style>
body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
overflow: hidden;
height: 100%;
max-height: 100%;
}
#urlfield_header {
background: white;
position: fixed;
top: 0px;
left: 0;
right: 0;
bottom: 0px;
width: 100%;
overflow: hidden;
}
#navi {
position: fixed;
top: 23px;
left: 0;
right: 0;
bottom: 0px;
overflow: hidden;
}
</style>
<script>
function keysDown(event)
{
if(event.keyCode == 13)
go();
}
function go()
{
var url = document.getElementById("urlfield").value;
if(!url.includes("http://") && !url.includes("https://"))
url = "http://" + url;
document.getElementById("pagecontent").src = url;
}
</script>
<body>
<div id="urlfield_header">
<input type="button" id="home" value="Home" onclick="document.getElementById('urlfield').value ='startpage.com'; go()"/>
<input type="text" id="urlfield" onkeydown="keysDown(event)" style="width: 50%"/>
<input type="button" id="navigate" value="Go!" onclick="go()"/>
</div>
<div id="navi">
<iframe id="pagecontent" src="https://startpage.com" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0"/>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Pictured: I attempted to load an NXDOMAIN / non existent domain (same effect as a blocked one) and was then redirected to the server's captive portal. (the attached small html page) I then tried to navigate to gbatemp.net from the makeshift url field, and as you can see from the image "Load denied by X-Frame-Options-> 'does not permit cross-origin framing' ". Then I hit the home button and it loaded back to startpage... (So startpage of course doesn't have this setting set).
In theory if you do mostly go to places that don't block cross origin framing, then this method would be acceptable to you. Well maybe the switches browser doesn't care about the X-Frame-Options header though, but seems unlikely. Well it was worth a shot! And it does work except for the X-Frame-Options problem. So it's either take some more extreme measures(for a very un-extreme thing like web browsing?) or we should just homebrew it which will either let us control the browser normally or a homebrew fully featured browser! I'd say that's our best bet, in the meantime make the best of what we have!
