Links stopped working -- jquery issue?

Question

I have links in a dropdown menu bar for navigation around my site. Yesterday, they worked fine. Today, they the menus no longer dropdown and the links that do display (in the headers) don't function like links (i.e. cursor doesn't change, they don't display the hover color change, etc.) I even reverted to old commits to make sure I hadn't broken them, but they don't work at all, even for commits where I am 100% positive they used to. When I do click on a 'link', I get the warning 'event.returnValue is deprecated. Please use the standard event.preventDefault() instead.' from a jQuery file. I've tested on both Chrome and Firefox. Normal links work fine, just not the ones in my navigation bar.

<ul>
  <li><a href="#">About Us</a>
      <ul>
         <li><a href="/quiz/" >Quiz</a></li>
         <li><a href="/photos/">Photos</a></li>
         <li><a href="/story/" class="last">Our Story</a></li>
      </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

Edit: That warning actually comes up whenever I click anywhere on the screen, not just on the links.

Edit: http://jsfiddle.net/sLNHz/

You're preventing the default action somewhere in your javascript, only you know where ? — adeneo, Nov 18 '13 at 17:40
Hmm--not really sure how/where. Any idea where I might look, or what to search for? — thumbtackthief, Nov 18 '13 at 17:40
That's not about this warning, have a look at my recent question - http://stackoverflow.com/q/20045162/2795926. So it's just jquery's api warning, it shouldn't really affect your code now. — Alex Parakhnevich, Nov 18 '13 at 17:40
That's what I thought, but why would my links stop working all of a sudden? — thumbtackthief, Nov 18 '13 at 17:41
Make sure there is nothing overlaying that menu! Do inspect element and check if any other `div` covers up your menu. — Venkateshwaran Selvaraj, Nov 18 '13 at 17:42
It's not, and honestly this was one of the first things on the site that I've coded, so it's worked for many commits. I checked out an old version just to make sure--it used to work and now it doesn't, even on committed versions that were good. — thumbtackthief, Nov 18 '13 at 17:44
I can/will, but even when I commented it all out so that only the menu headers showed (which are also links) they didn't work either. — thumbtackthief, Nov 18 '13 at 17:45
The first thing you should do if you haven't already is to pull up the site in chrome right click then inspect element. then go to console and see what JavaScript errors may be getting thrown. — Chris Hawkes, Nov 18 '13 at 17:47
Yeah, nothing except that one (and some css warnings). No errors, just warnings. — thumbtackthief, Nov 18 '13 at 17:48
Maybe it's all about your stylesheet? You could probably disable your links with `pointer-events: none;`. Well, still I suppose you couldn't have overlooked that. — Alex Parakhnevich, Nov 18 '13 at 17:48
I don't understand how it's possible for an old commit that used to work now no longer does. — thumbtackthief, Nov 18 '13 at 17:48
I enabled `float:left`. It started working. In CSS for `#templatemo_menu ul` — Venkateshwaran Selvaraj, Nov 18 '13 at 17:53

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 18 '13 at 17:51

2

In your fiddle, it's the display: inline on the <ul> element: That makes the whole thing collapsing to zero width and hence the links unclickable. The text is shown because of the default overflow: visible. So, it's a CSS issue, not a JS one.

answered Nov 18 '13 at 17:51

Boldewyn

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Wow. You are correct. Do you have any idea why that used to work and now doesn't? I can guarantee I haven't changed it--that line's been there a very long time. – thumbtackthief Nov 18 '13 at 17:54
When did you comment out the `float:left` on the `ul`? Floating changes the effective `display` (not the value set, but what the browser does with the element) to `block`. Basically, the issue arises, because someone changed from a float-based horizontal nav to a `display:inline`-based or vice versa and left half of the old statements in there. My suggestion: clear either the `inline` or the `float` declarations. – Boldewyn Nov 19 '13 at 12:36

Links stopped working -- jquery issue?

1 Answers1