What does data-ajax="false" really do?

Question

The links on my site don't work and I got an solution of using data-ajax="false" on my anchors without getting a true explanation. Can someone help me?

Answer 1

data-ajax is a feature of jQuery Mobile. JQM by default will try to load pages via ajax for improved user experience and transitions. If you set data-ajax='false' then JQM will do a normal page request instead of using ajax. This can be used on forms as well as links.

From the docs:

This tells the framework to do a full page reload to clear out the Ajax hash in the URL

If you want to disable ajax on all of your links then instead of adding data-ajax to everything, you can do it like this:

$(document).bind("mobileinit", function () {
    $.mobile.ajaxEnabled = false;
});

Answer 2

Nothing at all.

data-* is a generic set of attributes that you can store data in for access by JavaScript.

Unless you have some JavaScript that deals with them, they are meaningless.

jQuery has nothing built in that does anything with them.