disable a hyperlink using jQuery

Question

<a href="gohere.aspx" class="my-link">Click me</a>

I did

$('.my-link').attr('disabled', true);

but it didn't work

Is there an easy way to disable the hyperlink using jquery? Remove href? I would rather not fiddle with href. So if I can do it w/o removing href, that would be great.

Answer 1

You can bind a click handler that returns false:

$('.my-link').click(function () {return false;});

To re-enable it again, unbind the handler:

$('.my-link').unbind('click');

Note that disabled doesn't work because it is designed for form inputs only.

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jQuery has anticipated this already, providing a shortcut as of jQuery 1.4.3:

$('.my-link').bind('click', false);

And to unbind / re-enable:

$('.my-link').unbind('click', false);