Disable and Enable ALL Hyperlinks using JQuery

Question

I have the below which disables all hyperlinks but after an event I want to enable them back all again, how can I do this?

$("a").click(function() { return false; });

I don't think its as simple as just setting it to true. ;)

Thanks all

Answer 1

Binding and unbinding takes some overhead.

A different solution would be to add a class like disabled, then use hasClass('disabled') to test and see whether or not it should return false.

$('a').addClass('disabled');
$('a').click(function() {
    if($(this).hasClass('disabled'))
        return false;
});

Answer 2

Try this:

// Better to use the live event handler here, performancewise
$('a').live('click', function() {... return false;});

// Now simply kill the binding like this
$('a').die('click');

bye

Answer 3

you could unbind the click handler:

$('a').unbind('click')

Answer 4

Another way, if you strictly want the url to be inaccessible as well, you can remove href attribute from a tag. Something like that:

 $('a').removeAttr('href');

additionaly changing color of text and onhover cursor:

 $('a').css('color', '#333');
 $('a').hover(function () {
       $(this).css('cursor', 'not-allowed');
 );