How do I disable the right click button?

sbillard

This topic keeps coming back like a bad penny. So, I am making this post to answer all the people who have not previously researched the topic.

The question boils down to “how can I protect my intellectual rights by preventing viewers from capturing my images while still making them available for view.” Usually the actual question is “how can I disable the right click button {so that people cannot download my images.}”

The first part of this question is easily answered. There are many java scripts available to disable this action. Unfortunately, the second part of the question is not addressed by the first. The right click/save target as context menu is only one of a myriad of ways that someone can capture web content.

There is a very good discussion of this on about.com. But, just in case this link goes away without us noticing, I will summarize what it tells you.

• Disabling the context menu (what right click takes you to) is very annoying to people used to using the context menu for web browsing. Disabling it may turn people away from your site in disgust.

• Disabling the context menu does not prevent capture of web content, it only prevents one small method of doing so.

So, if you wish to protect your images you need to take a different tact. Some suggestions are:

• Watermark your image. Zenphoto provides a means to do this.

• Upload only small, WEB quality images. These images may be captured, but will be useful only for WEB pages.

• Imbed copyright information in the image—both in the metadata and with steganalysis.

But please do not cripple your site by disabling the context menu. Even if you do, it is quite easy for the viewer to re-enable it by typing `javascript:void oncontextmenu(null)` into the address bar of the browser.