I have a quick question regarding browser toolbars and functionality. I have > a client who is requesting a web application (online form) be built where > they will lose some if not all browser navigation control and functionality, > much like you would see on a Internet banking page. I'm against the idea > personally but wanted to find out if there are any such standards out there > that strongly encourage you keep these on your web page for usability and > accessibility reasons. Finally, they wanted to the URL to be hidden as well, > surely this is not recommended??
I have to admit it's a long time since I actually looked up supporting articles etc on this topic... messing with the browser chrome has been considered a bad idea for a long time (and thanks to a certain new browser, searching for articles about browser chromes has become exceedingly irritating). Banks are holdouts but I wouldn't be taking any web dev/usability leads from that industry ;) Usability and user relations suggest that interfering with the user's browser (tantamount to attacking their OS in the modern day) is a really bad idea. It's a huge breach of trust in an increasingly trust-based economy - if people can't trust you online, why would they trust you offline? Hiding the URL just suggests you're trying to do something dodgy and in Opera at least the browser makes it trivially simple to reopen the toolbars etc. I wouldn't be surprised if browsers simply stopped letting pages hide toolbars and URLs altogether, now that they use the URL bar for important status and security information. The other point I'd have to make is that removing these functions doesn't do anything positive for the web app. People can still click back (right click), refresh (f5), etc... you're not preventing any "undesirable" user interactions that might cause problems for a web app. It's unclear what benefit the client thinks they're getting. >From the accessibility point of view, it's not acceptable to mess with the user's equipment. The browser is controlled by the user (it's not part of the page after all), who will have learned their setup and may be significantly annoyed and disoriented if your site changes it. Not sure if those points will help convince your client to leave the browser alone, but if you haven't already made those arguments maybe they'll help. Essentially they need to ask themselves: "do I want my website to behave like it's a phishing scam?" cheers, Ben -- --- <http://weblog.200ok.com.au/> --- The future has arrived; it's just not --- evenly distributed. - William Gibson ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [email protected] *******************************************************************
