[WEB4LIB] Linking to sites that cripple navigation

[Thomas Dowling]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerry Kuntz" <jkuntz at rcls.org>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2000 2:39 PM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Linking to sites that cripple navigation


> I recently received a complaint about a site that we cataloged in
> KidsClick!. The site in question is the Brainium:
> http://www.brainium.com/
> The complaint was that the jscript at this site disabled the Back
button,
> making it impossible to go back to a search result set in KidsClick!
It was
> suggested that we both complain to Brainium web masters and--failing
> that--remove it from the KidsClick! catalog.
> Web4libbers:
> 1) Could someone tell me the exact jscript command that is doing this?
I
> don't see it.
> 2) What do you think of deselecting sites in a library-managed web
guide
> that intentionally cripple normal browser commands?
>

This looks to me more like cluelessness than evil intent.
http://www.brainium.com/ consists entirely of a javascript redirect to
http://www.brainium.com/NewLook/ with a zero-second delay.  Hit the back
button there, and you go back to http://www.brainium.com, which
immediately takes you to their NewLook page again.

I'd definitely complain to them.  Whether or not you'd deselect them
based on this is a matter of your own editorial policies.  I would not
kick a library page out of Libweb for doing this, but I'd probably make
the link to the page they really take you to (which has no such redirect
problem).

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu