How to block users from closing a window in Javascript

Question

Is it possible to block users from closing the window using the exit button  X   I am actually providing a close button in the page for the users to close the window Basically what I m trying to do is to force the users to fill the form and submit it  I don t want them to close the window till they have submitted it  I really appreciate your comments  I m not thinking of hosting on any commercial website  Its an internal thing  we are actually getting all the staff to participate in this survey we have designed     I know its not the right way but I was wondering if there was a solution to the problem we have got here

User · Answer

Well you can use the window onclose event and return false in the event handler   function closedWin         confirm  close          return false     which will not allow to close the window      if window addEventListener         window addEventListener  close   closedWin  false      window onclose   closedWin    Code was taken from this site    In the other hand  if they force the closing  by using task manager or something in those lines  you cannot do anything about it

User · Answer

This will pop a dialog asking the user if he really wants to close or stay  with a message   var message    You have not filled out the form    window onbeforeunload   function event        var e   e    window event      if  e            e returnValue   message            return message       You can then unset it before the form gets submitted or something else with  window onbeforeunload   null    Keep in mind that this is extremely annoying  If you are trying to force your users to fill out a form that they don t want to fill out  then you will fail  they will find a way to close the window and never come back to your mean website

User · Answer

It s poor practice to force the user to do something they don t necessarily want to do   You can t ever really prevent them from closing the browser   You can achieve a similar effect  though  by making a div on your current web page to layer over top the rest of your controls so your form is the only thing accessible

User · Answer

What will you do when a user hits ALT   F4 or closes it from Task Manager  Why don t you keep track if they did not complete it in a cookie or the DB and when they visit next time just bring the same screen back    BTW  you haven t finished filling this form out      Of course if you were around before the dotcom bust you would remember porn storms  where if you closed 1 window 15 others would open  so yes there is code that will detect a window closing but if you hit ALT   F4 twice it will close the child and the parent  if it was a popup

User · Answer

Take a look at onBeforeUnload   It wont force someone to stay but it will prompt them asking them whether they really want to leave  which is probably the best cross browser solution you can manage   Similar to this site if you attempt to leave mid-answer     lt script language  JavaScript  gt      window onbeforeunload   confirmExit      function confirmExit             return  You have attempted to leave this page  Are you sure           lt  script gt    Edit  Most browsers no longer allow a custom message for onbeforeunload    See this bug report from the 18th of February  2016      onbeforeunload dialogs are used for two things on the Modern Web     1   Preventing users from inadvertently losing data     2   Scamming users         In an attempt to restrict their use for the latter while not stopping the former  we are going to not display the string provided by the webpage  Instead  we are going to use a generic string       Firefox already does this

User · Answer

How about that  function internalHandler e        e preventDefault       required in some browsers     e returnValue    quot  quot      required in some browsers     return  quot Custom message to show to the user quot      only works in old browsers    if  window addEventListener        window addEventListener  beforeunload   internalHandler  true     else if  window attachEvent        window attachEvent  onbeforeunload   internalHandler

User · Answer

If you don t want to display popup for all event you can add conditions like  window onbeforeunload   confirmExit      function confirmExit             if  isAnyTaskInProgress               return  Some task is in progress  Are you sure  you want to close                      This works fine for me

User · Answer

If your sending out an internal survey that requires 100  participation from your company s employees  then a better route would be to just have the form keep track of the responders ID Username email etc  Every few days or so just send a nice little email reminder to those in your organization to complete the survey   you could probably even automate this

[javascript] How to block users from closing a window in Javascript?

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