Coding Vent: Do NOT disable right click!!

Yay my first web post! Too bad it’s a vent. Hee hee.

Note to web developers: We are no longer in the 90’s anymore. Freakin’ do not disable right clicking for your viewers! It’s extremely annoying. I get why it was done in the 90’s. No one wanted hotlinking of images so their bandwidth gets maxed. It makes sense…then

Now, I haven’t seen a hosting plan that put a cap on bandwidth–even the cheap hosting plans offer unlimited. These are the days of viewers opening things in new tabs or windows. If you disable their right click, they can’t easily open your links in a new window. If you are so worried about your images getting hot linked, there are a TON of other ways to handle this. I’ve read of ways of doing it with PHP. The easiest way to stop it though is with your .htaccess file (for LINUX server anyway–I don’t know about Windows servers). There’s even a way to do it via CPanel (it might be configuring the .htaccess file also). Below are some links:

Stopotlinking with PHP: http://safalra.com/programming/php/prevent-hotlinking/
Stop hotlinking with .htaccess: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess10.shtmlStop hotlinking with CPanel: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/cpanel/what-is-hot-linking-how-do-i-enable-and-disable-hotlink-protection

Easy cheesy!

Now if you’re worried about people stealing photos, there are other ways for people to steal them. Screenshots are wonderful for that or people can also look in your code (more hardcore).

Phew! I feel better that I got that off my chest. Some of you guys might be curious as to what site brought this on. It’s not a boring old blog or a site from the 90’s. It was actually the site ForRent.com. I was looking for different apartments (Craigslist was bringing up nadda) and I tend to love opening potential links (ie. apartments) in new tabs so I can go through multiple ones quickly and not have to go back in my history and click on the next one and so on. It’s very tedious.  This is how I tackle manga sites quickly as well.

Alright. This is the end of my vent. 🙂 I feel better now. So take it from a person who is on the web a lot: don’t disable right clicks!

Note: I know that some of the older generation don’t understand the whole tabbing deal, but I would think that ForRent.com’s viewers would be younger because a lot more people in the 20’s are renting then people in their 60’s. That’s just me.