Question

I have an <a> tag that contains a span. The span has javascript attached to it that does something. As a result, when the span is clicked, the javascript runs, but the <a href> is ignored and it doesn’t navigate to it.

Is there a way to make it continue to navigate as normal?

<a href='http://www.google.com'><span>some text</span></a>

the click event is actually registered some other way than onclick, my question title is a bit misleading.

Hovering over the link puts the URL into the status bar as you’d expect, just clicking it does nothing.

The javascript is simple return true; at the moment while I try to figure it out.

I suspect as the javascript is in the span and not the a that it gets confused about how to propogate back up to the href once the javascript is done.

I’m afraid I don’t know how it’s bound, because it’s some bizarre third party component.

Answer 1

I suspect as the javascript is in the span and not the a that it gets confused about how to propogate back up to the href once the javascript is done.

Yes. If your onClick handler is on the span, the browser can’t read the hyperlink’s href attribute. If the link has an id, you can do :

function onclick()
{
    //Do your things...

    var link = document.getElementbyId('your_link_id').href;
    window.location.href = link;
    return true;
}