jQuery DIV click, with anchors

Question

If you return "false" from your function it'll stop the event bubbling, so only your first event handler will get triggered (ie. your anchor will not see the click).

$("div.clickable").click(
function()
{
    window.location = $(this).attr("url");
    return false;
});

See event.preventDefault() vs. return false for details on return false vs. preventDefault.

$("div.clickable").click( function(event) { window.location = $(this).attr("url"); event.preventDefault(); });

Using a custom url attribute makes the HTML invalid. Although that may not be a huge problem, the given examples are neither accessible. Not for keyboard navigation and not in cases when JavaScript is turned off (or blocked by some other script). Even Google will not find the page located at the specified url, not via this route at least.

It's quite easy to make this accessible though. Just make sure there's a regular link inside the div that points to the url. Using JavaScript/jQuery you add an onclick to the div that redirects to the location specified by the link's href attribute. Now, when JavaScript doesn't work, the link still does and it can even catch the focus when using the keyboard to navigate (and you don't need custom attributes, so your HTML can be valid).

---

I wrote a jQuery plugin some time ago that does this. It also adds classNames to the div (or any other element you want to make clickable) and the link so you can alter their looks with CSS when the div is indeed clickable. It even adds classNames that you can use to specify hover and focus styles.

All you need to do is specify the element(s) you want to make clickable and call their clickable() method: in your case that would be $("div.clickable).clickable();

For downloading + documentation see the plugin's page: jQuery: clickable — jLix

I know that if you were to change that to an href you'd do:

$("a#link1").click(function(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  $('div.link1').show();
  //whatever else you want to do
});

so if you want to keep it with the div, I'd try

$("div.clickable").click(function(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  window.location = $(this).attr("url");
});