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.

---

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);