I am working on an application that needs to block the user from opening any new internet explorer or firefox windows (any browser). User should only have 1 IE window open for taking online exam. I am working on create an activex control for the same, but need to know how to block new windows from opening?
+1
A:
There is no way you could possibly make this watertight, and any efforts you make to do so will only make your exam more irritating and fragile.
Sure, you could make an ActiveX control or Firefox add-on that went around shutting any other windows or tabs. It'd be totally obnoxious and easy to avoid by just doing the Googling in a separate browser. You could try requiring users to install an application that completely took over the machine or network connection to do the exam instead, which would cause endless compatibility and support problems... but even if you managed to make it secure (which you can't) it's still easy to avoid by running the exam in a virtual machine, or doing a search on another machine like a netbook or smartphone.
In conclusion: you should give up. Instead, make tests time-sensitive and design the questions to be understanding-based instead of fact-based, to make them difficult to come up with a simple Google answer for.
bobince
2010-01-08 05:56:04