Difference between event.preventDefault() and return false

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:

• jQuery serialize() function
• jQuery serializeArray() key value pairs