I'm not currently working on a coding project that is trying to implement this, but I am curious... I've seen JQuery Block UI login pages that basically block out a site as soon as you navigate to them if you do not have not yet authenticated... However, is this secure? I thought most browsers had options to disable client side scripting, therefore allowing the person just to turn off the Jquery functionality and surf at the very least the first page that is being blocked out... Any links or resources on this topic would be cool. Thanks.
It's obviously just cosmetics. You need to ensure on the server that people cannot perform any actions they are not supposed to perform.
However, for paywalls like on NYC times they don't care about that kind of security - there are enough "dumb" people who think they HAVE to pay.