Exclude filter from certain url's

I'm using a filter in web.xml to check if a user is logged in or not: ``` <filter> <filter-name>LoginFilter</filter-name> <filter-class>com.mycompany.LoginFilter</filter-class> </filter> <filter-mapping> <filter-name>LoginFilter</filter-name> <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern> </filter-mapping> ``` And this works like a charm until I have a stylesheet or image I want to exclude from this filter. I know one approach is to put everything that's protected inside `/private`or similar, and then set the url-pattern to: `<url-pattern>/private/*</url-pattern>`. The downside to this is my URLs now looking like: `http://www.mycompany.com/private/mypage` instead of `http://www.mycompany.com/mypage`. Is there another solution to this problem, that let me keep my pretty-urls?