Question

Why does the return false stop the alert() from working and how do I get around this? If I remove it, the alert will show up, and then it will load the page that the <a> tag pointed to.

<script type="text/javascript">
    $("document").ready(function(){
        $("a").click(function(){
            if(!$(this).is('static')){
                var href = $(this).attr('href');
                $.getJSON(href, function(data) {
                    alert('hi');
                });
            }
            return false;
        });
    });
</script>

Answer 1

My guess is that badly formed JSON is being sent to the client, which will prevent the callback from firing. The manual says:

If there is a syntax error in the JSON
file, the request will usually fail
silently. Avoid frequent hand-editing
of JSON data for this reason.

Can you show us a snapshot of the JSON that the server is generating?