Prevent Default Event Actions Using MooTools 1.2

By  on  

Many sweet JavaScript events are trigger by clicking on a link or a submit button. What if you don't want the browser to follow the link? What if you don't want the form to be submitted traditionally? MooTools allows you to prevent the default actions of most elements by using the preventDefault() method.

The Sample XHTML

<p><a href="http://scriptandstyle.com" class="prevent">ScriptAndStyle.com</a></p>
<p><input type="checkbox" class="prevent" /></p>
<p><input type="submit" class="prevent" value="Submit Form" /></p>

The action of any element with the prevent class will be nullified upon click.

The MooTools 1.2 Code

window.addEvent('domready', function() {
	$each($$('.prevent'),function(el) {
		el.addEvent('click',function(event) {
			event.preventDefault();
		});
	});
});

You can also prevent the browser from allowing image dragging! I did, however, notice that this function did not work correctly on a radio input.

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

  • By
    7 Essential JavaScript Functions

    I remember the early days of JavaScript where you needed a simple function for just about everything because the browser vendors implemented features differently, and not just edge features, basic features, like addEventListener and attachEvent.  Times have changed but there are still a few functions each developer should...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS :target

    One interesting CSS pseudo selector is :target.  The target pseudo selector provides styling capabilities for an element whose ID matches the window location's hash.  Let's have a quick look at how the CSS target pseudo selector works! The HTML Assume there are any number of HTML elements with...

  • By
    GitHub-Style Sliding Links

    GitHub seems to change a lot but not really change at all, if that makes any sense; the updates come often but are always fairly small. I spotted one of the most recent updates on the pull request page. Links to long branch...

Discussion

  1. thomasd

    You can use the $lambda function and a little bit of the Elements-Class magic to make this a one-liner:

    window.addEvent('domready', function() {
           //Now every click on one of the .prevent-Elements returns a 'false' and the propagation of the event gets stopped.
        $$('.prevent').addEvent('click',$lambda(false));
    });
    
  2. @thomasd: Sweet tip!

  3. asdf123

    i found that the method that fails the least is:

    $("bla").addEvent('click',function(_e){
    
    new Event(_e).preventDefault().stopPropagation();
    
    
    //alternatively:
    
    new Event(_e).stop();
    
    //or very simple in mootools 1.2:
    
    return false;
    
    })
    

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!