Best way to deal with null links

HTML & CSS
1

Hi guys,

A problem popped up this morning that I have always known about but never had to deal with until now. What if I need to display an anchor link which goes nowhere, I have two choices right?

a href=“javascript:void(0)”

or

a href=“#”

I am currently building a chromeless YouTube player and the links I want to be nullified are the buttons that are calling its api functions. So I need the correct cursor behaviour but not the anchor behaviour. The # option is definitely the wrong one because it refreshes the current page but on the other hand I haven’t seen javascript:void(0) used for years. Is it better for me to just use CSS to change the cursor behaviour and not use <a> tags at all?

I appreciate any advice

2

I think there are lots of debates over this. An alternative you could try is

<p><a href="#me" id="me" onclick="return false;">Something</a></p>

The ideal would be to have the JS out of the HTML altogether, but I’m not quite sure how to write that. (It’s a job for the JS forum. :slight_smile: )

PS: the real problem here is having a link that does nothing with JS off. Ideally, users without JS shouldn’t be left with a dead link. If that’s the case, it suggests there’s a better solution.

3

Thanks Ralph that’s interesting, so basically you are targeting the anchor to itself so that you don’t get the page scrolling.
I guess you could just use jquery :

$(“#me”).click(
function{
do something()
});

That way you are targeting the link with the id of me without having to have any inline scripting.
Thanks again :slight_smile:

4

First off, if the anchor only exists to bind an ajax event to, then the anchor should be put there via javascript.

Then you should do something like

$('.null').click(function(e){
   //do something()
   e.preventDefault();
});