event.preventDefault() function not working in IE

I know this is quite an old post but I just spent some time trying to make this work in IE8.

It appears that there are some differences in IE8 versions because solutions posted here and in other threads didn't work for me.

Let's say that we have this code:

$('a').on('click', function(event) {
    event.preventDefault ? event.preventDefault() : event.returnValue = false;
});

In my IE8 preventDefault() method exists because of jQuery, but is not working (probably because of the point below), so this will fail.

Even if I set returnValue property directly to false:

$('a').on('click', function(event) {
    event.returnValue = false;
    event.preventDefault();
});

This also won't work, because I just set some property of jQuery custom event object.

Only solution that works for me is to set property returnValue of global variable event like this:

$('a').on('click', function(event) {
    if (window.event) {
        window.event.returnValue = false;
    }
    event.preventDefault();
});

Just to make it easier for someone who will try to convince IE8 to work. I hope that IE8 will die horribly in painful death soon.

UPDATE:

As sv_in points out, you could use event.originalEvent to get original event object and set returnValue property in the original one. But I haven't tested it in my IE8 yet.

in IE, you can use

event.returnValue = false;

to achieve the same result.

And in order not to get an error, you can test for the existence of preventDefault:

if(event.preventDefault) event.preventDefault();

You can combine the two with:

event.preventDefault ? event.preventDefault() : (event.returnValue = false);

If you bind the event through mootools' addEvent function your event handler will get a fixed (augmented) event passed as the parameter. It will always contain the preventDefault() method.

Try out this fiddle to see the difference in event binding. http://jsfiddle.net/pFqrY/8/

// preventDefault always works
$("mootoolsbutton").addEvent('click', function(event) {
 alert(typeof(event.preventDefault));
});

// preventDefault missing in IE
<button
  id="htmlbutton"
  onclick="alert(typeof(event.preventDefault));">
  button</button>

For all jQuery users out there you can fix an event when needed. Say that you used HTML onclick=".." and get a IE specific event that lacks preventDefault(), just use this code to get it.

e = $.event.fix(e);

After that e.preventDefault(); works fine.