What's the effect of adding 'return false' to a click event listener?

Question

Many times I\'ve seen links like these in HTML pages:

Click here !

Answer 1

Here's a more robust routine to cancel default behavior and event bubbling in all browsers:

// Prevents event bubble up or any usage after this is called.
eventCancel = function (e)
{
    if (!e)
        if (window.event) e = window.event;
    else return;
    if (e.cancelBubble != null) e.cancelBubble = true;
    if (e.stopPropagation) e.stopPropagation();
    if (e.preventDefault) e.preventDefault();
    if (window.event) e.returnValue = false;
    if (e.cancel != null) e.cancel = true;
}

An example of how this would be used in an event handler:

// Handles the click event for each tab
Tabstrip.tabstripLinkElement_click = function (evt, context) 
{
    // Find the tabStrip element (we know it's the parent element of this link)
    var tabstripElement = this.parentNode;
    Tabstrip.showTabByLink(tabstripElement, this);
    return eventCancel(evt);
}