Cancel the default action (navigation) of the click.

Edit code and click me	Your Result (Some examples do not work in Google Chrome):
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> $(document).ready(function(){ $("a").click(function(event) { event.preventDefault(); $('<div/>') .append('default ' + event.type + ' prevented') .appendTo('#log'); }); }); </script> </head> <body> <a href="http://jquery.com">default click action is prevented</a> <div id="log"></div> </body> </html>
Edit the code above and click to see the result	www.xhtml.co.il - Try it yourself