Disabling right click on images using jquery

what is your purpose of disabling the right click. problem with any technique is that there is always a way to go around them. the console for firefox (firebug) and chrome allow for unbinding of that event. or if you want the image to be protected one could always just take a look at their temporary cache for the images.

If you want to create your own contextual menu the preventDefault is fine. Just pick your battles here. not even a big JavaScript library like tnyMCE works on all browsers... and that is not because it's not possible ;-).

$(document).bind("contextmenu",function(e){
  e.preventDefault()
});

Personally I'm more in for an open internet. Native browser behavior should not be hindered by the pages interactions. I am sure that other ways can be found to interact that are not the right click.

For Disable Right Click Option

<script type="text/javascript">
    var message="Function Disabled!";

    function clickIE4(){
        if (event.button==2){
            alert(message);
            return false;
        }
    }

    function clickNS4(e){
        if (document.layers||document.getElementById&&!document.all){
            if (e.which==2||e.which==3){
                alert(message);
                return false;
            }
        }
    }

    if (document.layers){
        document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
        document.onmousedown=clickNS4;
    }
    else if (document.all&&!document.getElementById){
        document.onmousedown=clickIE4;
    }

    document.oncontextmenu=new Function("alert(message);return false")
</script>

In chrome and firefox the methods above didn't work unless I used 'live' instead of 'bind'.

This worked for me:

$('img').live('contextmenu', function(e){
    return false;
});

For modern browsers all you need is this CSS:

img {
    pointer-events: none;
}

Older browsers will still allow pointer events on the images, but the CSS above will take care of the vast majority of visitors to your site, and used in conjunction with the contextmenu methods should give you a very solid solution.

The better way of doing this without jQuery:

const images = document.getElementsByTagName('img');
for (let i = 0; i < images.length; i++) {
    images[i].addEventListener('contextmenu', event => event.preventDefault());
}

Would it be possible to leave the ability to right click and download just when done a separate watermark is placed on the image. Of course this won't prevent screen shots but thought it may be a good middle ground.

You could try this :

var message="Sorry, right-click has been disabled";

function clickIE() {
    if (document.all) {
        (message);
        return false;
    }
}

function clickNS(e) {
    if (document.layers || (document.getElementById && !document.all)) {
        if (e.which == 2||e.which == 3) {
            (message);
            return false;
        }
    }
}

if (document.layers) {
    document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
    document.onmousedown = clickNS;
} else {
    document.onmouseup = clickNS;
    document.oncontextmenu = clickIE;
}

document.oncontextmenu = new Function("return false")

Checkout a demo here

A very simple way is to add the image as a background to a DIV then load an empty transparent gif set to the same size as the DIV in the foreground. that keeps the less determined out. They cant get the background without viewing the code and copying the URL and right clicking just downloads the transparent gif.

This should work

$(function(){
     $('body').on('contextmenu', 'img', function(e){ 
         return false; 
     });
 });