In Javascript event handling, why "return false" or "event.preventDefault()" and "stopping the event

Posted by Jian Lin on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Jian Lin
Published on 2010-06-15T02:10:34Z Indexed on 2010/06/15 2:12 UTC
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It is said that when we handle a "click event", returning false or calling event.preventDefault() makes a difference, in which

the difference is that preventDefault will only prevent the default event action to occur, i.e. a page redirect on a link click, a form submission, etc. and return false will also stop the event flow.

Does that mean, if the click event is registered several times for several actions, using

$('#clickme').click(function() { … })

returning false will stop the other handlers from running?

I am on a Mac now and so can only use Firefox and Chrome but not IE, which has a different event model, and tested it on FF and Chrome and all 3 handlers ran without any stopping…. so what is the real difference, or, is there a situation where "stopping the event flow" is not desirable?

this is related to

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3042036/using-jquerys-animate-if-the-clicked-on-element-is-a-href-a

and

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2017755/whats-the-difference-between-e-preventdefault-and-return-false

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