In order to track the overall user clickstream, I'd like to fire a JavaScript event, if the user right-clicks, and select "Open in new Tab" (or middle-clicks in most browsers) on a link. Most of these links are linking outside of my site, and I'd like to interfere with overall browser experience (such as: status bar, etc) as little as possible. What options are there to solve this?
If you're looking at ways to see outbound link hits, you could try the following:
Use a script, example link.php?src=http://www.example.com that increments a counter per IP & User Agent combo when clicked. This however doesn't look very good in the status bar. It could also be saved by web crawlers.
Use unobtrusive JavaScript to attach event handlers on links that are external. You could determine if they are external if the hostname is present and doesn't match the one you are on. You could then use this event handler to save the href, prevent default of click event, to increment a number much like the first script and then send the window.location to the actual href. This of course fails without JavaScript enabled/supported.
There are many ways that a user can create a new tab in a browser:
Middle click
Context menu
Mouse gesture
"New tab" button on the toolbar
"File" > "New tab"
Unfortunately there is no way to handle all these and potentially more user actions that could create a new tab.
You could do a simple server redirect and log the hits that it gets
Or does it have to be js?
Middle click capturing does work.
You
have to check the browsers version (ie6 doesn't open anything on middle click),
have to use mousedown and mouseup to check if these two events happen on the same element,
have to check which button was pressed. (jQuery "which" function, for example)
If mousedown and mouseup happen on the same element, a new window opens, so you'll know that your link was clicked.
Related
I've searched for hours, but I couldn't find a solution for this.
window.onbeforeunload = warn;
This doesn't work:
function warn (e)
{
var destination = e.href;
alert(destination );
}
Okay, so to clear the things. If the user clicks on a link on the page itself, it is easy, because you can add an eventhandler to all of the links onclick event, but. I want to catch the address, what the user types into the url box of the browser.
Because it can't be done. The new location is private/sensitive information.
Nobody wants you to know which sites they visit when they leave your site.
If you just want to see what link destination, you can use :
document.activeElement.href
But getting the address line destination is not possible.
I've heard of solutions where they fire off an event if the mouse moves up to the address line (to warn the user that there are unfinished processes that have not been dealt with), but this sort of hack I would never do.
Kaze's answer is an interesting approach, but looking at the element focus when the page is navigated away from isn't really reliable. Partly because there is a delay between the link click and the navigation away from the page (during which time the user may move focus to some other element, but also because a link may be focused (eg. by keyboard control, or mousedown-without-click) without actually being used to navigate away from the page. So if you focused a link then closed the window, it'd think you were following the link.
Trapping onclick for every link on the page (plus onsubmit on every form) is slightly more reliable, but can still be fooled due to the delay. For example you click a link, but then before the new page starts loading hit the back button (or press Escape). Again, if you close the window it thinks you're following the link.
I want to catch the address, what the user types into the url box of the browser.
There is no way that will ever happen. It is an obvious privacy no-no.
I've searched for hours, but I couldn't find a solution for this.
window.onbeforeunload = warn;
This doesn't work:
function warn (e)
{
var destination = e.href;
alert(destination );
}
Okay, so to clear the things. If the user clicks on a link on the page itself, it is easy, because you can add an eventhandler to all of the links onclick event, but. I want to catch the address, what the user types into the url box of the browser.
Because it can't be done. The new location is private/sensitive information.
Nobody wants you to know which sites they visit when they leave your site.
If you just want to see what link destination, you can use :
document.activeElement.href
But getting the address line destination is not possible.
I've heard of solutions where they fire off an event if the mouse moves up to the address line (to warn the user that there are unfinished processes that have not been dealt with), but this sort of hack I would never do.
Kaze's answer is an interesting approach, but looking at the element focus when the page is navigated away from isn't really reliable. Partly because there is a delay between the link click and the navigation away from the page (during which time the user may move focus to some other element, but also because a link may be focused (eg. by keyboard control, or mousedown-without-click) without actually being used to navigate away from the page. So if you focused a link then closed the window, it'd think you were following the link.
Trapping onclick for every link on the page (plus onsubmit on every form) is slightly more reliable, but can still be fooled due to the delay. For example you click a link, but then before the new page starts loading hit the back button (or press Escape). Again, if you close the window it thinks you're following the link.
I want to catch the address, what the user types into the url box of the browser.
There is no way that will ever happen. It is an obvious privacy no-no.
I have an application where I use an iframe for a facebook likebox.
I want to subscribe, in the main page, to the event when the user clicks on the like button in the iframe.
Basically as soon as the user likes the page I want him to be redirected to a page I'll specify.
What javascript command can I use?
Thanks
Unless your parent document is on the same domain as the Facebook Like frame, you can't script into it at all, for security reasons. This is the Same Origin Policy. It prevents you not only from detecting the click but also from impersonating the user, forcing them to perform actions (such as Liking you) without their consent.
You can try to place an element on top of the frame to detect clicks, but by intercepting the click you also stop it going through to the frame. About the best you can do is detect a hover over the area of the Like button and remove the covering element, allowing the user to click. This isn't reliable though since it'll catch all mouseovers.
You can hook this up to the button
onclick = "window.location('www.google.com')"
obviously replacing the URL with yours. But you might want to check if that's legal.
I have an iframe that references an external URL that serves up pages that contain Flash adverts.
I need to track how often a customer clicks on one of those adverts.
The approach I am taking is to render a div element over the iframe. This allows me to intercept the click event, however I need to pass that click down to the iframe. Is this possible using JavaScript?
No, it's not possible. You can't simulate a real click in javascript, you can only fire click events.
I do not think that it is possible as well
But, assuming that the clicks redirect the user to the site of the advert, you could intercept the user click using redirections. Change the link to some script on your own server with some unique advert id. Register the click and redirect the user to the advertisement page.
Another possibility is to use this technique to load the contents of the iframe, so you known the amount of customers viewed the advertisement. But this of course might be an advertisement scheme your advertisement customer does not like/want.
You can't pass the click through by any legitimate means, and you'll run up against cross-domain problems if you tried to fake it in anyway. And I would definitely stay away from anything that looks like a clickjacking solution - it's bound to stop working (and feels evil too).
You may be able to hack something, depending on how accurate it has to be. This would involve tracking the sequence of events happening when user has put their mouse into the banner area and then left the page (inferring that they clicked on the ad). You'll miss some, and you may catch some false positives too.
It would work something like:
Leave the covering div in place
onMouseOver, hide the div and set an
onbeforeunload event handler that
registers a "click" through an AJAX post (or similar)
when the mouse moves out of the banner area it means they didn't click the ad, so show the div again and remove the event handler
I'd guesstimate you'd get about 80-90% accuracy, but you're going to have to test on a lot of browsers. It's also assuming the ad loads into the same window and not a new one. If it loads into a new one then I think it's going to be even harder.
I've searched for hours, but I couldn't find a solution for this.
window.onbeforeunload = warn;
This doesn't work:
function warn (e)
{
var destination = e.href;
alert(destination );
}
Okay, so to clear the things. If the user clicks on a link on the page itself, it is easy, because you can add an eventhandler to all of the links onclick event, but. I want to catch the address, what the user types into the url box of the browser.
Because it can't be done. The new location is private/sensitive information.
Nobody wants you to know which sites they visit when they leave your site.
If you just want to see what link destination, you can use :
document.activeElement.href
But getting the address line destination is not possible.
I've heard of solutions where they fire off an event if the mouse moves up to the address line (to warn the user that there are unfinished processes that have not been dealt with), but this sort of hack I would never do.
Kaze's answer is an interesting approach, but looking at the element focus when the page is navigated away from isn't really reliable. Partly because there is a delay between the link click and the navigation away from the page (during which time the user may move focus to some other element, but also because a link may be focused (eg. by keyboard control, or mousedown-without-click) without actually being used to navigate away from the page. So if you focused a link then closed the window, it'd think you were following the link.
Trapping onclick for every link on the page (plus onsubmit on every form) is slightly more reliable, but can still be fooled due to the delay. For example you click a link, but then before the new page starts loading hit the back button (or press Escape). Again, if you close the window it thinks you're following the link.
I want to catch the address, what the user types into the url box of the browser.
There is no way that will ever happen. It is an obvious privacy no-no.