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Disabling Right-Click?

Ajay left a message in my IM two days ago asking how to disable right-click on her blog. I replied that it wasn’t a solution to the problem. Could be a deterrent but at the end of the day it’s still easy to copy your content and pictures.

To me, disabling right-click could be doing more harm than good to your blog:

  • Prevents “Open link in new tab” for Firefox/Flock users like me. And I use that a lot.
  • Highlight and search. If you’re not familiar with this in Firefox/Flock, you can highlight a word or a term, right-click and a “Search this in… Google” option will appear.
  • Quoting your blog entry. While Ctrl+C is the common copy command, most people I know still use the Right-Click technique.

So what’s a good alternative? Watermarked pictures. Yes, people will still get your photos without credits but with watermarks, you’ve already done that for them. A simple URL overlay on the photos you publish online can do the trick.

There are other ways too to prevent image hotlinking but that’s another thing for next time…

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17 Responses to “Disabling Right-Click?”


  1. Gravatar Icon batjay replied on May 16th, 2006 at 12:30 am (1)

    i agree. you can disable the rick click button but ultimately it can’t protect your content that much as the old CNTRL-C click we’ve inherited from the MS DOS days still works in windows.

  2. Gravatar Icon J. Angelo Racoma replied on May 16th, 2006 at 1:45 am (2)

    It’s a usability issue, too.

    As for firefox–I love middle-click!

  3. Gravatar Icon AhmedF replied on May 16th, 2006 at 2:51 am (3)

    Disabling right clicking is one of the most annoying things. Not that it works in FireFox anyway.

  4. Gravatar Icon Jeff replied on May 16th, 2006 at 4:30 am (4)

    They’res only one fool-proof way to protect your content: don’t publish it on the web

  5. Gravatar Icon Jaypee replied on May 16th, 2006 at 5:53 am (5)

    yeah, disabling the right click won’t stop people from ripping stuff from your site. it might lessen but not completely protect your content. view source is one way of bypassing the disabled right click. and if you are a Firefox user, disabling the right click is like cutting of one hand. hehe

  6. Gravatar Icon kutitots replied on May 16th, 2006 at 5:53 am (6)

    well, if you can disable right-click, why not disable highlighting the entire page all-together? there’s nothing to CTRL+C on. :D

    But then, there’s always SAVE PAGE AS…

  7. Gravatar Icon Dave Starr replied on May 16th, 2006 at 8:33 am (7)

    Good advice. For those who think that disabling right click protects anything, they really need to learn more about what the web is all about.

    I too frequently use right click to open in a new tab. When I find this feature disabled I almost always leave and don’t come back.

    There’s another totally legitimate use of right clicking to look at the source code. When I see a particularly well designed site, or a feature I haven’t seen before, I often peek to see how it was done, if the blog template is custom to the site or a pubically available one, etc. Prevent me from doing this and I won’t be much of a satisfied user, anxious to see more of what’s offered.

  8. Gravatar Icon noemi replied on May 16th, 2006 at 8:58 am (8)

    Like Dave, I often use right click to open a new window tab. And I get disappointed if a site disables it. But it’s also my experience that newbies often hotlink images and one of the first things they learn is right click “copy image location”.

  9. Gravatar Icon ba replied on May 16th, 2006 at 10:38 am (9)

    Well, there’s control+left click for opening links in new tabs in Firefox.

    But still, anti-right click sites are annoying.

  10. Gravatar Icon alfie replied on May 16th, 2006 at 3:39 pm (10)

    Just go to File->Save Page As…-> then save. Then, all of the content of your web page has copied, including text, jc files and pictures. No right click involved.

  11. Gravatar Icon ade replied on May 16th, 2006 at 5:07 pm (11)

    i used to do that on my old site, but it only slowed my site down.

  12. Gravatar Icon jepaperts replied on May 16th, 2006 at 10:56 pm (12)

    disabling right click won’t help. the best way to protect content and images… never publish it on the web.

  13. Gravatar Icon alfie replied on May 17th, 2006 at 5:20 pm (13)

    I agree with abe’s recommendation, putting a water mark on the photos will also help you to popularize your website.

  14. Gravatar Icon ajay replied on May 19th, 2006 at 1:18 am (14)

    hmm, the watermark doesn’t look good to me. & besides, ‘twould appear too hardsell;)

  15. Gravatar Icon eric replied on May 23rd, 2006 at 8:45 am (15)

    pangit nga pag walang right click.. what i do now is add watermarks to all my images.. pangit sya pero ok na rin.. lahit papano..
    and all the images in my gallery are protected against hotlinking..

    =)

  16. Gravatar Icon Earvin replied on Apr 6th, 2008 at 4:16 pm (16)

    Thank you! This actually convinced me not to search for the right-click disabling code anymore. I think I’ll watermark my images from now on! Wehehehehehehehhe> >;-)

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