Disabling right click on web pages

protecting photos, etc, on a web page

[wedesign]

Does anyone know how to disable the right click function of copying photos on a web page? I have seen this on a few pages in the past and I might want to use it myself.
Thanks!

[jusdrum]

You can find free javascripts on [hotwired.lycos.com...]

However, you should know that disabling right clicks doesn't stop someone from taking your images. In particular on a Macintosh, which doesn't use right-clicking to download or copy images.

[bedlam]

Do a search on the forums here. This has been discussed and discussed ad nauseum. There's only one important fact when this question comes up: if the visitor to your site can see/read the graphics/information, then that information and those graphics have already been downloaded to that visitor's computer. Period. There is nothing to protect against, because the user already has it all!

The very best you can hope for is to slow down non-technical users who might want to steal your content at the cost of very considerable annoyance for some of your more sophisticated visitors who don't.

-B

PS - right-click on a web page and look at all the other options. You will be preventing people from, among other things, easily bookmarking your site...

[sidyadav]

Its very easy to hack a right-click disabled page:
Download the HTML file on your computer (or go view source), remove the JS code that disables the right click and ta-da!
or, copy/paste the code in FrontPage, remove the code that disables the right-click. Either way, you succeed.

But this is only if care to waste your time doing it. I wouldn't.

> right-click on a web page and look at all the other options. You will be preventing people from, among other things, easily bookmarking your site...
Not true. The only options that you will be preventing a user from by disabling your right-click will be the extra ones you get when you install a (IE) toolbar (Get Alexa Data, See related links, Translate into English...), and "Save Picture As", "Save Background As" etc which of course, can be accessed in alternative methods, but will be hard to - for a joe user.

All the other options are available in the top menu. I never use the options in the right-click menu anyway, I prefer to use the top menu (File, Edit, View, Favourites, Tools, Help....)

Sid

[le_gber]

Another way of copying images is to reduce the size of your IE window and click on an image and drag it on your WinXP desktop. Works if image is not link. I came accross this a couple of weeks ago. Therefore there is no way to stop people downloading you pics. You can't disable left click otherwise people won't be able to navigate.

Leo

[tbear]

75% of times I open links in another window. Anyone who disables the right click really p****xs me oxf and gets the boot!

sidyadav, is there another way to do that without right click or special tools?

[le_gber]

tbear, by holding the shift key and clicking on the link it will open it in a new window.

Hope this helps

Leo

[RobinC]

Added to that the next mozilla (1.7) has an option to disable disabling of the right-click...

Robin

[bufferzone]

I would recommend an entirely different approach to protection your images. I do the following.

1. Always upload your images in the smallest physical size. If the image is shown in 200*200, upload the image in that size, never upload a bigger image and downscale.

2. Always use highest acceptable compression rate. Using .gif or .jpg, you must compress your image as much as possible, It gives you higher download speed and keeps the quality down discouraging people from stealing it.

3. Give your image filer unique names. Most people don’t bother to change the name of images they steal. By searching Google for the specific filename, you can often find the perpetrator.

4. Sign your images. In Photoshop you can use digimark to sign your images with a unique signature

5. Keep your good quality images in an restricted area of your web, or let people who want’s better quality images e-mail you

[PCInk]

..and you can use a large see-through gif with some CSS to cover the original image. Right-clicking and 'save as...' now saves a blank gif!

Not perfect, but Netscape has a File, Save Page option which allows you to save the source code, including all graphics and external files. There seems to be no way around it.

[ukgimp]

I would not bother with it. If they want the image there are plenty of ways of getting it :)

[Strange]

Also remember that by disabling the right click, you are taking away some controls, such as back, forward, reload, and stop, for the "power" user. This can discourage some people from visiting your site.

[sidyadav]

> Also remember that by disabling the right click, you are taking away some controls, such as back, forward, reload, and stop, for the "power" user.
um... the top "Standard Buttons" toolbar? also, read msg.#4.

Sid

[treeline]

In windows XP, I don't even need to right click. If the cursor rests on an image, a little box pops up encouraging me to save it.

Mostly this is a nuisance, obscuring the image partially, but it's one more thing for you to try and restrict...

[wedesign]

Thanks for all the information and great responses!

[bedlam]

> right-click on a web page and look at all the other options. You will be preventing people from, among other things, easily bookmarking your site...
Not true. The only options that you will be preventing a user from by disabling your right-click will be the extra ones you get when you install a (IE) toolbar (Get Alexa Data, See related links, Translate into English...), and "Save Picture As", "Save Background As" etc which of course, can be accessed in alternative methods, but will be hard to - for a joe user.

Sorry sidyadav, I think you misunderstood me ;-)

I know perfectly well all the stock right-click items are available elsewhere. I meant that by disabling the right-click, you'd be making a user interested in bookmarking your site go to a little more work (clicking favorites->add to favorites, or disabling javascript) - and I think most people don't want to make their visitors do extra work to make it easy to come back!

-B

[thewebboy]

You know a webmaster is an amateur when you go to the site and the right click is disabled.

[sidyadav]

> I know perfectly well all the stock right-click items are available elsewhere. I meant that by disabling the right-click, you'd be making a user interested in bookmarking your site go to a little more work (clicking favorites->add to favorites, or disabling javascript) - and I think most people don't want to make their visitors do extra work to make it easy to come back!
yeah, I agree. If I visit a site that I really like, which doesn't have a "Add to Favourites" or a "Make widgets.com your homepage" link - I leave it.

So I guess it pays to have those - and not to disable your right click - because to be honest, I actually find that quite "un-professional" as I only see it on angelfire or geocities sites (aka. "personal homepages"). Well, that's just me.

Sid

[bedlam]

yeah, I agree. If I visit a site that I really like, which doesn't have a "Add to Favourites" or a "Make widgets.com your homepage" link - I leave it.

So I guess it pays to have those - and not to disable your right click - because to be honest, I actually find that quite "un-professional" as I only see it on angelfire or geocities sites (aka. "personal homepages"). Well, that's just me.

The other thing that's 'just you' is the weird meanings you're reading into my posts...

-B

[microcars]

perhaps discussed before,but you COULD slice up your images. I've done this for eBay items and I have seen a few other sites where the images are just cut into 9 pieces and when loaded, look fine. The only way to get the image is to do a screen shot of it or take the individual pieces and re-assemble them.

[Maylin]

I'm yet another person that OFTEN right clicks on pages for functions that have nothing to do with stealing content. If I wanted to steal an image, in windows it's as easy as pushing 'prnt scrn' and pasting it in my graphics program. There are too many other ways of saving images for disabling right click to be of any use except for the most computer illiterate individuals.

[BReflection]

As stated by microcars I slice up the images. Not only are they hard to steal but they load nice and quickly.

[mahlon]

[squarefree.com...]

Does not work, available from this site are bookmarklets, "Restore Context Menu", hover over the button, right click and save as a bookmark. Once someone is on your page they just open the bookmarklet they have saved and it will disable the right click block.

they can also drag images to the address bar, then save them, sometimes they come out larger than on the web page.

screenshots, watermarks...........nothing but thumbnails will keep them from getting the hi-res image.

[sebbothebutcher]

i think you can only disable right click for IE, but you can still goto "File->Save as" and download the file, and after that you can view the source and therefore download images, etc...

[victor]

You also got to think about your motivation for wanting to disable a hardware device that you do not own.

And also, what sort of reputation that creates for you in other people's eyes.

I run anti-virus protection to stop people disabling my hard drive. I'd certainly be happy to have that extended to stop people disabling my mouse pointer.

I have zero tolerance on this issue, and I am sure I am not alone.