There’s an insurance company website I use quite a lot for work. Recently, they changed a feature that makes no sense. Before, when you logged out, it would return you to the login page. Now, it shuts down your browser!
I called their web support line and asked about this. I was told by the drone that this was “an executive decision” and that he couldn’t tell me anything else.
Of course, these are the same people who tell me that a particular function would be fixed “in a couple of hours”. Apparently in their world, “a couple of hours” equals several days or weeks.
About 90% of the time, the site works quite well, but the other 10% negates that because it’s usually during a time I need it the most.
The only thing I can think of is that they were designing the login feature to spawn a seperate window, and then abandoned it halfway because they realized that it would get slapped down by popup blockers.
Another vote for that… my company’s web access email asks you to close the browser window after you log out, with a message box. Doesn’t force it closed until you click “close” though.
I can’t find the specifics, but there was a bug in one of the browsers at one point where the next site you visited could retrieve some data from the previous session (if the session was a certain type). Closing the browser window or tab prevents that.
Also some sites tell you to do this (my online credit card site does) and warns you to clear the cache files because someone can come along later and look at them and see where you visited and possibly what you did–but there’s no way for them to force that remotely–you have to do it yourself if the browser is not set to dump cache files on close.
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Every screen containing patient info is secured and does not stay in the cache. The operators of the website don’t know what they’re doing half the time.
When I clicked on the “contact the webmaster” link, I got a 404.
Does it close the WINDOW or does it close the BROWSER PROGRAM?
If you’ve got two dozen other browser windows open, does it exit out of the program and close all those windows, or just the one you were in for the duration of your bank transaction?
I have to use IE at work. It’s annoying becuase I may need to use the browser window again.
I just tried the same site using Firefox. I still get the “Are you sure?” box, but when I click yes, the window goes blank and in the url line it says:
Reason I asked is that Internet Explorer on Windows has nonstandard behavior (as reflected in people’s terminology in this thread, referring to the individual window as a “browser”) —the OS treats IE as a subset of the OS rather than an application, so one never “quits out of Internet Explorer”; closing an IE window when you have no other IE windows open means you can’t just go Control-N and get a new blank window, you’re no longer “in” Internet Explorer once that window closes.
In a standard application, if a window closes on you, you’re still in the application that spawned it.
Nonstandard or not, it’s unusual to see web designers diss Internet Explorer for Windows. Far more common to see them design around it so nothing else works with their site!
The web folks don’t know how to do what they have been told to do and still keep the browser open. This is true ignorance.
The web folks don’t want to do what they have been told but they can’t directly pick a fight with the boss, so they close the browser and tell him that’s the only way it can be done, hoping the boss will eventually change to their view. This is enlightened ignorance.
This seems like the correct answer to me. If you’re viewing sensitive information, unless you close the browser window, you can still get back to it. If you recycle the window, it doesn’t matter if you’re logged out, or that nothing is stored in the cache – you can still flip back and see whatever it was you were looking at.
Automatically closing the browser window removes that possibility. Most secure sites will advise the user to close the browser themselves, instead of relying on a script to do it. Personally, I’d just as soon that my bank’s website did it automatically. Save me a click, and all. I’ll use another window afterwards. If I’m on a computer that someone else might conceivably have access to, I don’t want them to be able to get back to a page that contains any private data if, an hour later, I forget that the window I’ve been using to surf the Dope has a page showing my account info and debit-card transactions for the past month, back at the start, accessible with two clicks by anyone interested in seeing what I’ve been up to.
Since when? The behavior you mention is standard on Macs, but almost every Windows application I’ve ever used exits if you close the last window it has open.