Question

I am using the following code to make the browser follow a link on mouse down instead of on mouse up (like a normal click).

$('#links a').each(function(){
  $(this).mousedown(function(){
    window.location.href=$(this).attr('href');
  });
});

First of all, is this good practice? GMail does this and it gives the effect that the page is loading faster than it actually is.

Also, is there a better way of doing this? I haven’t tested this in all browsers yet, so I’m not sure if it works in older browsers.

Answer 1

The mousedown function is not supported by Internet Explorer version 5.5 or earlier. jQuery normalizes the browser-specific behavior of the event capture into the mousedown function.

As to good practice or not, I don’t see a tangible performance benefit from handling mouse click events in this way. So, unless you have a specific reason for doing so, I would stay with standard conventions.