Friday, August 27, 2010

onClick is not a link

For the last entry I linked through to the Bakugan and Mighty Beanz however I didn't link through directly to the page, but instead to the English part of the site. In both cases I was taken to the links I use above which demanded I chose a language to view the site in. Except clicking did nothing, why not? Because I use NoScript which disables javascript scripts from running also I allow them to, it's a nice added safety precaution.

Except why is that stopping me from using this page? A look at the code tells me all.

<input alt="English" border="0" onclick=
"setLanguage('en','http://season2.bakugan.com/index.php')"
 src="images/uk.png" type="image" />

What the hell? So they're using a button (input) which is supposed to be part of a form (and isn't) to run a piece of javascript to set a cookie (part of SetLanguage) and take me to another page. Odder yet is that Japan and Korea use a direct link.

What is interesting is that Mighty Beanz uses exactly the same code. I don't mean similar I mean identical even down to the domain used by the cookie. Odd as they seem to be manufactured by two different companies.

Bakugan gets better once you reach the English page, the menu bar is made up of

<div class="leftNavMenu mouseOverImage divLink" href="/news/"
style="background-image:
 url(&quot;/asset/site/leftnav_news.jpg&quot;);">
</div>

Not even an onClick, but what's with the bare "href"? Turns out they use a bit of javascript to detect the divlink class and then apply a click attribute using the href contents. Why? Seriously why not just use a simple "a" link?

I can't see it cutting down anything, the link information still needs to be present so why do it in such a cumbersome manner?

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