Topic awaiting preservation: unusual client request (Page 1 of 1)

Hi all!

A client of mine has come up with a request that i wouldn't usually follow as the method is often abused on the net.
My client wants a popup when the user leaves the site saying "thank you for visiting our website bla bla bla".
The page is buildt using Dreamweaver Templates and it is a css & xhtml only site, no frames no tables, no fuss.
Now the problem is that when i use the onUnload event, the popup will open when ANY link is clicked, regardless if it is on the clients domain or not.

How can I create a popup that will only come up when someone actually leaves the site?
I know this is a horrible practice and i've tried a thousand times to convince him not to do this but he wants it... :-(

<´¯`·.¸ Patric ¸.·´¯`>

this sort of thing may need a bit of experimenting...

i can't provide much practical help at the moment, but i suppose you would need to find out what sort of variables are available at that point in time on the browser. are you able to see where the user is going?

if not, then the simplest (yet rather annoying) way i can think of offhand is to have on all local links:

<a href="www.ourdomain.com/thislink.html" onclick="localSite=true;">

....and then have on your onunload:
if(!localSite) alert("YAH! I am an annoying company who somehow believes that this will improve your online experience!");

or similar.

well, good luck!

Reitsma's idea gave me an idea for a simpler way to do this, that won't be so difficult... use this script:

<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload = function() {
var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
for (var a=0; a < anchors.length; a++)
{
/* if the anchor links outside of the page (it contains "://" as in "http://", but not "ourdomain.com")... */
if (anchors[a].href.indexOf("://") != -1 && anchors[a].href.indexOf("ourdomain.com") == -1)
{
anchors[a].onclick = GoodbyeMessage;
}
}
}

function GoodbyeMessage()
{
alert("Doesn't this alert make you so glad you visited our page?");
}
</script>

Untested code, but maybe you get the general idea from it. The logic of the if condition may need improvement to work in 100% of cases.

[This message has been edited by Slime (edited 03-20-2003).]