Question

I am trying to use preventDefault so that nothing happens when a form is submitted with ‘Account number’ as the input’s value.

For all the reading I have done, I cannot see the problem. I suspect I have just been staring at it too long and am missing something really obvious. Help me leave the office on time today!

Example of the non-working code here: http://jsfiddle.net/sX52r/

HTML

<form action="/" id="AccSearch" method="post">                            

<input type="text" name="AccountNumber" ID="AccountNumber" class="lookup_field" value="Account number" onfocus="if(this.value=='Account number'){this.value=''}" 
onblur="if(this.value==''){this.value='Account number'}">

<input type="image" id="AccSearchSubmit" src="/Images/search.png" onmousedown="this.src='/Images/search_down.png'" onmouseup="this.src='/Images/search.png'" onmouseout="this.src='/Images/search.png'" alt="Submit" />

</form>

js

$('#AccSearchSubmit').click(function (e) {
    if ($('#AccountNumber').val == 'Account number') {
        e.preventDefault();
        alert("BOING!");
    }
});

Answer 1

Use the submit event of the form.. Using click() – you will have to manually handle the enter key press.

$('#AccSearch').submit(function (e) {
    if ($('#AccountNumber').val() == 'Account number') {
        e.preventDefault();
        alert("BOING!");
    }
});

Also you were missing the parentheses after .val()

http://jsfiddle.net/sX52r/8/