08/10/01
Web Scripting
  
    For today's topic of discussion, we will concern ourselves with THIS site. It's 
nothing really personal with this particular site, it's just a convenient example of 
what we are discussing here. Let's say you are browsing this site, searching through 
thier selection of Counter Strike models (which were decent and numerous from what I 
saw), and you decide to download one of these models. Now chances are if you download 
models, or anything in general, you want to save a lot fo the zip files you download. 
I mean it's good to keep the zips of all the models you download for in the future 
you may wish to use them again, and if you have the file on your hard drive or on a 
CD somewhere then you don't have to go out searching for the model again in hopes 
that the site you found it on is still in existance.
  
    so what is the problem The files start downloading themselves. There is no chance 
to pick to save this file because it will automatically start opening itself. Now 
usually on pages with Autodownload Scripts there will be a place that says Click here 
if the file does not start downloading. But often these buttons don't work properly if 
Save target ased. And file catchers such as Getright don't understand the scripting 
being done here. So in the end you get a set of files in some directory somewhere 
without a quick easy way of backing up said files without zipping them yourself. Unless 
of course you dig through the internet cache. Which is a bit of a hassle but not too 
difficult. But really it could all be saved if the page would just link straight to the 
file in question instead of using all this annoying script ID passing.
  
    Actually slightly more annoying than the autodownload is the anti-right click 
script. This is the one that when you right click to save a file or a picture, instead 
you get this big ugly SORRY CAN'T DO THAT type message box. Once again, these can be 
circumvented sometimes by opening the file in an HTML editor (like NOTEPAD), and finding 
the URLs of the imagedfiles yourself and downloading them with getright, but this is 
a lot of work. also for pictures it's easy enough to simply press print screen them 
past into paintbrush, crop, save, then there is your image. Once again, too much work.
  
    And lastly we have the ever annoying instability of Java and other web scripts used 
for special fancy menues and interactions. Let' go back to the Counter Strike site 
mentioned earlier. While navigating this site, due to the scripts being used, my web 
browser crashed. Not only did the browser crash, the whole fucking PC crashed causing 
me to have to reset. Not just so you know guys, creating a webpage with shitty buggy 
Java isn't a good way to gain repeat visitors.