Unfortunately, I'm working with some 3rd party javascript, which inserts links into my pages. Rather than just use these links as is, I want to use proxy elements, which, when clicked, trigger the click event on the 3rd party links.
The 3rd party links pack javascript into the href attribute, like this:
<a id="horribleLink" href="javascript:doSomething()">Click me</a>
My proxy element looks like this:
<button rel="horribleLink" class="linkProxy">No, click me</button>
And a bit of jQuery'd javascript to link them together:
$('button.linkProxy').click(function(){
$('#' + $(this).attr('rel')).click();
});
Now, this works perfectly if the 3rd party link is just a standard link ( a slightly less horrible onclick (<a id="horribleLink" href="http://www.google.com">Click</a>), or<a href="#" id="horribleLink" onclick="doSomething()">Click</a>), but when the javascript is inside the href attribute, triggering 'click' does nothing at all.
Can anyone tell me why, and if there's a reasonable workaround?
Updated As Millimetric said, the root cause looks to be that browsers prevent 'faking clicks' on anchors - I've removed my 'standard link' example, as that's another situation that doesn't work. The onclick handler does work, though, as you'd expect.