What options do I have preventing the user from just closing the browser or navigating to another site? (of course I can\'t prevent him pulling the plug on the computer, etc
You should use the onunload event.
<script>
function onExitHandler() {
// called when user about to leave the page
}
</script>
<body onunload="onExitHandler()">
...
</body>
You can see an example here: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_onunload.asp
You could use the JS beforeunload
event in order to achieve this.