When I’m navigating around a good site I’ll often have several pages open at once, either as IE windows, or Firefox tabs. I’ll see a link and think “I need to read that when I’m done here, I’ll load it now”, right mouse click and get it going.

Sometimes people are trying to protect their images and page source by blocking the right mouse click. This really annoys me and usually I don’t proceed with the site. The owner has just lost all credibility.

Why that’s pathetic

• The main browser menu still works and will reveal the source
• You are only viewing the html and javascript – anything that is intellectual property should be contained in the serverside script
• Any javascript should be in a separate file, harder to get to but still accessible.
• If you’re trying to protect your images it’s too late, they’re already in my cache and I can retrieve them from there if I really, really want them, but copyright helps. If they’re not needed for a link then consider hiding their location by placing them as backgrounds in the CSS. Not foolproof but the casual image stealer will be stumped.

So if you’re tempted to throw some javascript like this on the page, please, please think again.