Clarification on Avoiding Giving Offense to Users

[Bobb Menk]

A point of clarification or two to my original post (which was in 
essence):

> Patron uses public station to surf web.
> Patron visits offensive site
> Patron pops up 2nd (or 3rd or 4th or 5th) Netscape window to cover
> up offensive window when others go by station Patron finishes
> session leaving Netscape at library home page rather than closing
> Netscape out altogether. Next patron sits down to discover multiple
> offensive open Netscape windows that had been hidden behind an
> inoffensive window, gets angry etc.

Most of the secondary, tertiary, etc. Netscape windows may not in 
fact be created by the patron but by the place to which he has 
surfed.

As one of my respondants mentioned:

"A number of adult sites automatically open multiple sites and if a 
user doesn't know how to really close all these they may overlook 
them. "

This is true of many non-offense giving sites as well - you open the 
link, and a little bitty window pops up along with the main page.  
(For a non-pornographic example see 
http://www.warehouse.com/microwarehouse/   which pops up an ad that 
is well-behaved enough to go away when you leave the page.)  The 
little window doesn't always go away after you leave the site, but 
gets hidden behind other windows.

I believe that these "windows within windows" are typically written 
in Javascript, which one can of course disable - but that has the 
disadvantage of also disabling some of the more interesting aspects 
of many other sites.  Still, a combination of kiosk settings and no 
java script may help considerably.

I've also had multiple suggestions of various "timeout" methods to 
shut down a browser after x minutes of inactivity.

Any other approaches that any of you may have tried or considered?

Thanks for your help.

Bobb Menk, Internet Librarian, Lane Memorial Library
Hampton, NH 03842  603-926-3368
bmenk at hampton.lib.nh.us