Most Ugly trick yet

[dmcgill]

Worse than pop ups or anything else to me are these pages that get you stuck inside the site. You click on the url and find out that it is not what you were looking for or just want to keep browsing. When you hit the back button, you can't go. It just keeps opening up the site. Who ever thought that idea up was trying to make people upset. The only way I have found out of these sites is when I close the browser. Then you have to go in and start your search from scratch.

Because I accept sites on our search engine every day, I run into these type all the time. They don't get listed. I want to keep people on my site but not that way.
dmcgill

[OSFan]

These sites use meta refreshes set at 0 or very small to redirect, for example from www.mysite.com/ to www.mysite.com/newindex.htm or something.

When you are on newindex.htm and click back, the browser refreshes instantly to newindex.htm again, and yes, it's annoying! If you click the back button enough times in succession, you should be able to get out.

W3 describes it as "breaking the back button", they should use other techniques to redirect, such as using the apache module "mod rewrite".

[jamal]

Hi,
what browser are you using? I know for a fact that Netscape and IE have a little arrow (pointing down) right beside the back button which shows your recent browsing history. If you click that arrow you can go back several pages in one click instead of just one!

[dmcgill]

I use the Bill Gates special, IE 6.0 but also have netscape. I will have to try that on Netscape next time. Thanks for the hint. Sometimes we get stuck in our old ways.
dmcgill

[freelancemom]

Oh god, yeah...

I ABHOR those! Especially when time is money and every click counts.

Lori

[Sualdam]

In IE, if you double (or more - i.e. quickly) click the 'back' button you can get usually out of the page with no trouble.

This feature is usually employed by people just because they know how to, and under the mistaken impression that if you take people prisoner they're more likely to do business with you ;)

[drtandem]

Agreed. This is a stupid design trick. It is usually found on sites that suck. As some have mentioned, your IE browsers have a small downward arrowhead just to the right of the "Back" button. Clicking on it will give you the option of jumping to where you have been. On older Netscape browsers the same is done by simply holding the "back" button on the down position by holding the left mouse button down with the cursor over the "Back" button.

[swstyles]

You guys see it as a trick.
I think not.

I use it because I have clients with multiple domain names which go to the same website. When using my javascript validation, I can only have one domain name in use. I have to check the domain when a visitor first visits the site and if the domain isn't the primary domain then I do a redirect to the proper domain. There is nothing sinister in that. Why do you believe the web designer's intentions are sinister if you can't click the back button to leave? Its not always done to keep the visitor from leaving.

[tertius]

On ecommerce sites those quick redirects also occur when the site server needs to process code or carry over session info--having been a developer consultant placed with a Fortune-100 telecom whose site used .ASP for processing the dynamic page code, it was common in the shopping cart for every other page to be a script code page with no displayed HTML (pages verifying credit card info, credit checks, and such behind-the-scenes activities). The developers there were definitely not intending to hold the users captive, but were so code-focused they didn't even realize the effect of this coding practice on the end user!

But as jamal said, instead of just clicking the Back arrow, look at the Back history dropdown which should (in IE) allow you to see the previous 5 pages and let you move back in in more than 1 page increments.

HTH!
-Tertius

[LoveNotWar]

Because I accept sites on our search engine every day, I run into these type all the time. They don't get listed. I want to keep people on my site but not that way.
dmcgill

Hey, I have a site where one may get caught in such a trap, and it is not intentional and I have worried about it so would be interested in your thougts, as a submissions person, or anyone elses.

My problem is that when I started off making my site I stupidly used frames, and as I have progressed have used all tricks that I can think of to
1. Make sure everyone views the frameset as they should (contextually) and
2. That it can work to greatest effect with search engines

So ... I have built a tiny JS into each page so that if it is accessed outside of the correct frameset it immediately reloads itself inside the correct one. That can mean that if someone access a page in my site that is out of context (ie directly) then the JavaScript redirects him, and if he tries to use his back browser ... hey presto, back to the out of context page and straight back. Trapped.

Any ideas or thoughts? It is not malicious, I just dont know how to resolve another way.