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How can i capture anchor clicks to navigate the page? (preferrably in jQuery)

It's really frustrating because i forgot to save in my favourites a video tutorial to do exactly this. I want to capture all attempts to navigate away from the page (via an anchor i.e. <a href="otherpage.html">), and only navigate them depending on some condition (which is only if they don't have unsaved changes on that page).

I remember the example i saw involved getting all the anchors on the page, and then overriding the "open" function? Would that make sense? Does an anchor have an "open" function, or just an onclick function??

The overridden function then performs the check, and returns true or false depending on whether or not the page should be allowed to navigate. Can anyone refresh me on how i would do this? .. or does any one have any other similar solutions?

Ideally solutions in jQuery, but anything in plain javascript will do.

Michel Plungjan

<body onLoad="window.leaving=true" onBeforeUnload="return (leaving) ?'Are you sure':null">
<a href="leaving.html">Leaving</a>

<a href="staying.html" onClick="leaving=false">Leaving</a>

or the opposite

<body onLoad="window.leaving=false" onBeforeUnload="return (leaving) ?'Are you sure':null">
<a href="leaving.html" onClick="leaving=true">Leaving</a>

<a href="staying.html" >Leaving</a>

Pawel Witkowski

try this

$("a").each({
this.onclick=function()
{
   var goThere=confirm("You wana go out?");
   if (!goThere) return false;
}
})

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Pawel Witkowski

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paddycobbett

ASKER

This morning having gone through my whole browser history i finally found the link to the video tutorial i was looking for! And yes, it was exactly as you stated :)

thanks for your response

Michel Plungjan

If that works for you then why not just
return confirm("You wana go out?");