Question

I have a click bound as live to an element. The handler returns false after execution, but if the element happens to be an A tag, then the link is also not followed, which is unacceptable…

$('*').live('click', function(){
  // lots of code here
  return false;
});

Now if the element that is clicked on has a path like A>img and the image is clicked on, the A will never be followed. I dont want the click event to propagate any further.

how do I achieve this?

Edit:

It is essential for my application to bind the event to *. Also, the clicks can be made on any element, not just A’s. Thus none of the mentioned solutions are suitable for what I wish to achieve.

Answer 1

I would not bind a click function to *. You could bind it to the body element; the click will propagate from the element that was clicked to the body element. You can check the element that was originally clicked like this:

$("body").live("click", function (e) {
    if ($(e.originalEvent.target).is("a")) {
        return false;
    }
});

Having said that, you can still do this:

$("*").live("click", function () {
    if ($(this).is("a") == false) {
        return false;
    }
});