preventDefault() prevents the default event from occuring, stopPropagation() prevents the event from bubbling up and return false does the both.
Example of preventDefault() and return false:
$('a').click(function() { return false; });
$('a').click(function(e) { e.preventDefault(); });
So finally, return false from within a jQuery event handler is effectively same as calling both e.preventDefault and e.stopPropagation on the passed jQuery.Event object.
Read event.preventDefault() from jQuery reference.
return false is doing 3 separate things when you call it:
- event.preventDefault();
- event.stopPropagation();
- Stops callback execution and returns immediately when called.
Read: