Hello there!

I was just wondering if there is such thing as code to disable right-clicking on an image without registering your email first?

Any advice would be very appreciated!!

The very first 2 results from searching google (http://www.google.com/search?q=disable+rightclick) appears to be what you are looking for:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex9/noright.htm
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex9/noright2.htm

The 3rd tells why it's a waste of time:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/don...le-right-click

Some browser support deactivating the right click, but some don't. Or the user can choose if he agrees to disable the menu (firefox for instance).

And beside, the user make "save page", and he'll retrieve your images without right clicking.
If you want your images to not be downloaded, either don't make them available, or embed them in a java applet or a flash file.
And even with a solution like that, they are not 100% protected against power users.

Thank you very much for the responses!

I apologize for not being specific enough. I don't mind if the images are copied, I was just wondering if its possible to disable right-clicking unless the person is willing to submit their email address to my mailing list. Therefore, instead of a disable right-click per se, I was hoping to disallow right-clicking unless the person entered their email address.

Does this make more sense? I apologize for any confusion!!!

you can also use some javascript, but there still some ad ons or tools to enable this disabled right clicks...

Originally Posted by bmin

Thank you very much for the responses!

I apologize for not being specific enough. I don't mind if the images are copied, I was just wondering if its possible to disable right-clicking unless the person is willing to submit their email address to my mailing list. Therefore, instead of a disable right-click per se, I was hoping to disallow right-clicking unless the person entered their email address.

Does this make more sense? I apologize for any confusion!!!

In my opinion, that will just irritate the people who don't know how to get around it and irritate those who do. For me, nothing drives me away more than coding like that.

As a professional artist and graphic designer, I have come to the conclusion that right-click disablers are a total waste of time......not to mention very very annoying! If someone wants to copy an image from a website then they can and will do it.....whether or not you allow them to right-click. It might keep some people from doing it if you have a notice somewhere on each page stating that.............."all images are copyright (your-name) - anyone who dares to plagiarize will be subject to (insert severe punishment of your choice)"......

Actually, the phrase wouldn't have to be worded exactly like that, but I'm sure that you get the picture.


If you want to get people's email addresses, then have a form that they can fill out just for that. That's what I have on my art website. If you really want to encourage even more of them to give you their information, then you could even offer some small gift for signing up for your mailing list.

You could write server code to produce your html pages, put some kind of authentication mechanism in it, and have the server send down click disabling javascript when a user isn't 'logged in.' How you would do that depends on your site and how it's hosted.

But doing it won't endear you to your visitors. And it's as secure as leaving your keys in the ignition.

Like everyone has said it's pretty easy to work around. I understand what you're trying to do, but the end result will just be to drive people away and keep them from coming back.

Just a suggestion, can't you make 2 versions of each image, 1 with a watermark on it and the other clean and only show the watermarked images to the "unregistered" users?

You guys are right. It seems too much trouble to begin with!

The only reason that we wanted to use the feature was to add people to our mailing list. We will just go with using a watermark. Thank you to everyone for their responses!!!

You know it would actually be a lot easier to make your server send downa big watermarked version for 1 group of people and a different file to another group. Based on if you have their email address or not.

What makes the web really hard to program against is that when you have Windows software, it can hold "state" information for as long as the software runs. But when people say web application, it's a whole differnt kind of application where it's really a lot more like individual commandlets that come together to build something mroe than the sum of its parts. But because each of them is really interconnected, and only using what services are available to each browser, it's a mess.

For the record, I use the pop up menu to navigate. If you right click on a page, you get a back, reload, bookmark this page, and all the other great stuff at the top of the popup menu, which for lazy folks is better than moving the pointer all the way to the toolbar. If a site takes this away from me, I would leave - except that I have FireFox set up not to allow sites to boink with my popup menus.


So you made the right choice.