How can you disable the Windows' "X" close button in the upper right-hand corner for a web-based program that is displayed in IE7?

Question

We are using a software program at our school to enter IEPs (Individualized Education Programs). When entering goals and objectives for a student, users are provided with a Save and a Close button. Close is meant for users not wishing to save the goal they just chose. However, our users are sometimes wanting to back out of the screen and close the Window by clicking on the X in the upper right hand corner. Unfortunately, this somehow corrupts data and the user has difficulty later entering goals. The software company tells us to educate our staff not to click on the X and that there is no way to disable it. The software is web-based and our school has standardized on IE7.

Answer 1

A lot of browsers have a full-screen mode (F11 in Firefox), where they take up the entire screen real estate, hiding any other UI elements, including the top bar (at least for Windows, dunno about *nix). This is a very simple solution, but afaik there's no way to disable the [x] for windows in general, you'd have to find a browser that does not use the default Windows look and doesn't implement it's own [x] in the corner.

Answer 2

If it's web based, then you're probably just running a webpage in Internet Explorer. If that's the case, I'd recommend IE's kiosk mode.

If you need something a bit more heavyweight, Public Web Browser is a good and cheap choice that I've had good experiences with.

Answer 3

There is no way to disable the close button on the window (can you imagine!? ad popups that never go away! eek!).

However, you can catch it and do something useful (like click the "close" button on the form). See: http://blogs.x2line.com/al/archive/2004/09/15/561.aspx