Disabling Inspect Element: Good or Bad Practice? (2024)

Have you ever wondered that how can we disable right-click or Inspect Element console on a website? Should we actually disable it or not? How should we prevent people from copying the files of the website through the inspect element?

I took this as a normative theory. Since the idea is not always being thought about.

As of the question, How to disable right-click or inspect element for a website? There are a few ways that work in favor. But as people say, favors don't come for long and without consequences. Let's take this piece by piece.

How to disable element inspector on the website?

Sometimes you want to disable inspect elements from your website to secure it. I must tell you, based on my research it's quite not possible to completely blockinspect elements on your website.

But you can block some popular ways of accessing it.

- How to disable right-click on the website?

You can block this using javascript or with just your HTML

Disabling Inspect Element: Good or Bad Practice? (1)

or

Disabling Inspect Element: Good or Bad Practice? (2)

- How to disable inspector by use of other shortcuts involving Ctrl keys?

Disabling Inspect Element: Good or Bad Practice? (3)

- How to disable the inspector by use of the F12 key on the browser?

This can be blocked using a javascript key event listener. Use the below script to do accomplish it.

Disabling Inspect Element: Good or Bad Practice? (4)

- How to disable the inspector by temporarily removing DOM when the inspector is opened

What the below snippet does is to detect when the debugger is opened and removes the code and stores the code in a variable and when the debugger is closed, it returns it.

Disabling Inspect Element: Good or Bad Practice? (5)

Now, the million-dollar question, Is element inspector really get disabled for good?🤔

No, it's simply not!

You can't disable it completely. Web Console Inspectors are designed for HTML and JavaScript debugging. They do this by displaying the live DOM object on the web page. This means that it exposes the HTML code of everything you see on the web, even if it is created by JavaScript. Some inspectors also display the code inside iframes. In fact, if you look into angular.js code it is not visible on the view-source page but still, it is available on web inspector.

What about some JavaScript to prevent keyboard/mouse interaction?😈

There are some javascript ways/tricks on the page to suppress any keyboard, mouse interaction. But there's still something to do with those tricks. For example, you can use the top menu of the browser to allow the DOM inspector without any problems.

Try these:

They are outside the control of Javascript.

Why shouldn't you disable it?

Let's start with some explanation. Think of the internet as if you're a real estate agent. You want someone to look at the homes you 're showing up with. They remember the layout of the house whenever anyone sees your home. You can't give someone a home, and then magically forget what the layout was like. HTML and CSS front end codes are what users are seeing. You don't actually have to tell them the contractors who worked at the house or the original owner of the house or the cash flow of your business. This is the back end code. Topics like server-side languages like Python, PHP, Perl, etc.

HTML and CSS are front-end standards. They 're manipulating the data on the receiver side. HTML and CSS are processed by a browser that shows up on someone's screen. The very act of anyone seeing a website page in their browser shows "all HTML and CSS files". The only thing someone can't see is the side of the server. People can't see how their questions are being handled on the server-side.

You can prevent this by not building a website. But I have yet to hear about a company that considers HTML or CSS to be copyright infringement.😅 Until then,

Consider these alternatives which I found somewhere over the Internet🧐

  • Create a brand-new browser and only display your webpages on that browser. Don't equip your browser with developer tools. You can restrict access to the.htaccess site. Though this is possibly hackable by about three different methods from the top of my head. Also, if you're trying to keep people from knowing your color scheme, this can be easily bypassed by screenshots.
  • Or, maybe just show it on a cell phone. (This is actually hackable, but it can be faked as touch acts and screen sizes)
  • Have a constantly changing AJAX load that fills the code with thousands of lines of garbage. This doesn't shield your file, but it makes it easier to understand. It's going to slow down the page speed load.
  • For each pixel, you can use a different iFrame. It will probably take your page a few days to load on old computers and make sure that no site wants to index you. Don't preclude your code from being available, but it's definitely hard to reproduce. (Although no one would ever try to duplicate it. Ultimately, you 'd be bloating your website with a few factors).
  • You can only load your website within the app. However, this will allow you to build the software.
  • You might want to create your site in flash. Flash may be hackable though, and it's awful for SEO/UX, and it's losing support. (I can't even reach the flash on my desktop).
  • You could make your site a gigantic bitmap. Someone could still see your site and take a photo or a screenshot of it. You should have pulled the segments from AJAX. This is definitely hackable, and it's about the funniest way you might get to build a web. It doesn't shield you, but it makes it ten times easier to copy your File.
  • You might create a site that loads a specific code randomly. This isn't going to protect your site, but if you created 50 versions, it might take a long time for someone to find every single version. It would have been like a treasure hunt!
  • You can convert your website into a video and allow users to pause or continue. This will let people know the Youtube / Vimeo code or whatever flash / HTML5 plugin you 're using. But it would make it difficult to learn the code on your actual website. It wouldn't be social anymore, though.
  • You may refuse direct access to files, and only add code snippets to JS calls. This wouldn't secure your files forever, but someone would have to manually activate all your JS calls before they could copy your data.
  • You could write the code in a different language and have it incorporated in that way. This would not prohibit your HTML or CSS from being copied, but would "poison" the fragments of your code so that it would be harder to copy and paste.

We live in a world where code snippers are free, where designers advertise their skills in places like CodePen and SVG graphics are becoming the standard. (SVG paths can be copied and pasted).

Bigger Perspective

Give it a thought:

  • Everything on a website page is rendered by a browser so that they have a lower abstraction level than your JavaScript. They 're "protecting all the doors and continuing to hold all the keys."
  • Browsers would like websites to work properly on them, or their users would disdain them.
  • As a result, browsers want to expose lower-level ticks to web developers with tools like code inspectors.

Browsers are essentially the Allspark ( creator ) of your Primus ( JavaScript ), Primus for the Transformers.😁 And they want to give maximum control to the web developer with the code inspectors. Even if your trick had been working for a while, the browsers would have wanted to undo it in the future.

You are fighting a war against Primus ( metaphorically ), and you are destined to fail.

Disabling the Inspect Element: The Conclusion 🎬

It's best if we don't do so. In fact, we should never send the code we don't want people to see in the browser in the very first place. It’s also worth mentioning that it’s bad for usability and accessibility.

P.S. I'm wondering if there are any more ways that don't have a drawback or a workaround to counter the disabling of the right-click or inspect element.

...

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Disabling Inspect Element: Good or Bad Practice? (2024)
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