Don't Disable Right Click!

I just stumbled across a webpage entitled: Don't Disable Right Click. It lists the reasons why you should NOT disable right-clicking in your website no matter how scared you are of people copying your images and work.

I happen to be one of those who really get annoyed when I right-click and get a pop up that says "Right clicking has been disabled", so I thought I'd share the reasons listed out in that page in case you're one of those who does disable right-clicking.

Reason 1: Annoying

Sometimes you just want to use the right-click menu, for simple operations like Print, or perhaps you just want to quote something from the website, and cause you're so used to always just right-clicking, that's what you do when you get to this website too.

It's EXTREMELY annoying when you do that as a habit and the first thing you get is a pop-up.

Reason 2: Pointless

The main point of disabling right click is to stop people from stealing your work/images. If that person really wants to steal your stuff, disabling right-click is not going to stop them. All those options are still available in the browser menu.

Once they get to your source code, they can easily find the exact location of your images and get it straight from there. Some of those things can actually be retrieved from your cache too.

Also, there's something called disabling javascript in browsers. Once that's turned on, there ain't gonna be no disabled right click no more!

Reason 3: Disabling

"Mouse gestures that enable quicker navigation are starting to become a feature of browsers"

I don't use that, but other people do. This stops your users from accessing their user-friendly add-ons.

And there's always the simple want to open a link in a new tab or window. Not everyone has a mouse with a middle click, and not everyone knows the shortcuts to do those. (I have many friends who always right click and open a new tab)

Disabling people from doing all these just leads us back to Reason 1.

Reason 4: Unprofessional

I think the title is self-explainatory.

Reason 5: Insulting

"Most of your visitors will come to your site looking to buy something, or to find information. Only a small percentage of your visitors will land at your site with the intention to steal from it. By trying to protect yourself from the minority, you effectively insult the majority, who will use the right-click menu for legitimate reasons. Do you really expect your visitors to trust you when you offer them "helpful reminders" that imply you can't trust them?"

After seeing all these, it makes you wonder why people decide to implement such a thing, doesn't it? I mean, seriously, why would you want to do something that annoys your users, and if your website sells some product, chase your customers away, when what you're doing ultimately does not even protect you from thieving visitors anyway?

If you never thought about it this way, now you know. =)

Signing off... ...