Saxon » Saxon-CE

If I've understood this correctly, I believe this is the same 'prevent default' issue as described in issue #1503 #1590. Clicking on any HTML anchor a element with an href attribute will always result in a page reload unless steps are taken to prevent this default behaviour for browsers.

There's no cross-browser way (the preventDefault method for event won't work in IE), in XSLT, to prevent default actions directly with the current version of Saxon-CE, but there's an easy workaround for this anchor element case which is to use a span element with an identifying class such as class='hlink' and, if required, a @data-href attribute instead of an a element. CSS can be then be used to style the span element to appear the same as an a element - e.g. Click events for the span element can then be handled reliably within your XSLT without the page refreshing.

span.hlink {
   text-decoration:underline;
}
span.hlink:hover {
   cursor:pointer;
}

Thanks for the detailed explanation given in issue #1603! I didn't understand the difficulty with 'prevent default' because in JS I always used the cross-browser @return false@. If the workaround you propose can considered a temporary one it will pose no problem.

No problem... in my above answer I should have referenced #1590 (now corrected): 'eventProcessing, preventDefault. Yes, in JS returning false should always work - and this is how it is implemented when the ixsl:prevent-default attribute is used in the next Saxon-CE release to ensure cross-browser compatibility - the span workaround can therefore be considered temporary.