I followed a link from Google News to an article in the daily Free New Mexican. The page was so full of garish, chaotic ads it felt like my eyes were running a gauntlet of Rockem Sockem Robots. Because I'm not used to ads on web pages, because I use Firefox with Adblock. When I'm forced to use IE on someone else's computer, I get a headache. How can they stand it?
So this site bewildered me. I immediately went to right click on one of the ads, to open up the menu option and "block ads from www.freenewmexican.com," when this popped up:
I read, then re-read it, paused, collected my thoughts, and within 45 seconds I had:
- JavaScript disabled, eliminating all popups
- All images, frames, and ads blocked
- The source code for the page I was visiting
- A list of all the scripts they were using
- The path to their cache, holding all the site's images (i.e. this)
- The screenshot above
- One of the "protected" images on my hard drive, to illustrate this rant.
Limiting someone's ability to browse your public page invites your site to be exploited. What the hell are you hiding? What is so valuable that you have to disable your visitors' browsers? It's stupid, and the way we know it's stupid is, it doesn't work.
90% of people using the internets have no idea what the right mouse button does. Mac users don't even have one. So that popup can only be seen by those who can cripple it in 5 seconds (tools > options > content> disable JavaScript).
It's rude and insulting to paint your visitors as thieves and rule violators. Imagine browsing in a clothing store where they shouted their shoplifting policy at you every time you picked something up.
Message to web masters: Your fancy right-click JavaScript doesn't impress anyone. The few who can see it already know about copyrights, and if we want your crappy images they're ours for the taking.
Not that I don't understand; what else are you going to do, alone in your room, with your "Web Design for Dummies" centerfolds?
