how to set cursor style to pointer for links without hrefs

Question

I have a lot of <a> html tags without the href attribute for making onclick javascript calls. These links do not have a pointer style of cursor. They have text style cursor.

How can I set the cursor style to pointer for links without using the href attribute?

I know I can add href="#". I have this in a lot of places in the html document, and would like to know how to make cursor style pointer for links without using the href attribute.

Solution 1

in your css file add this....

a:hover {
 cursor:pointer;
}

if you don't have a css file, add this to the HEAD of your HTML page

<style type="text/css">
 a:hover {
  cursor:pointer;
 }
</style>

also you can use the href="" attribute by returning false at the end of your javascript.

<a href="" onclick="doSomething(); return false;">a link</a>

this is good for many reasons. SEO or if people don't have javascript, the href="" will work. e.g.

<a href="nojavascriptpage.html" onclick="doSomething(); return false;">a link</a>

@see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/behavioralseparation

Edit: Worth noting @BalusC's answer where he mentions :hover is not necessary for the OP's use case. Although other style can be add with the :hover selector.

Solution 2

style="cursor: pointer;"

Solution 3

This is how change the cursor from an arrow to a hand when you hover over a given object (myObject).

myObject.style.cursor = 'pointer';

Solution 4

Use CSS cursor: pointer if I remember correctly.

Either in your CSS file:

.link_cursor
{
    cursor: pointer;
}

Then just add the following HTML to any elements you want to have the link cursor: class="link_cursor" (the preferred method.)

Or use inline CSS:

<a style="cursor: pointer;">

Solution 5

Give them all a common class (for instance link). Then add in css-file:

.link { cursor: pointer; }

Or as @mxmissile suggested, do it inline with style="cursor: pointer;"

View more solutions

Comments

[Alxandr]

Bye the way, when you say link, do you mean like "<a id="do_some_javascript">test</a>"? Or is it just a span or div tag that does some javascript?

[Alxandr]

Using :hover isn't necessary, and it's not guaranteed to work on links without a href.

[Ross]

i can't imagine where it wouldn't work. this is a good way to learn, you may want to have other add behaviours similar the links with an href attribute: a background change, underline, color, et al.

[Sikshya Maharjan]

It's been a while since I used this, but for < IE6 it might be worth adding a conditional comment to link to styles featuring cursor: hand;

[easwee]

You don't need conditional comment - just do .myStyle {cursor: hand;cursor:pointer;} - newer browsers will ignore hand attribute since they don't understand it anyway. Also IE6 will still understand pointer - hand is for ie5 and below.

[Alxandr]

Using an a in itself can cause some problems though. Especially in IE because they trigger OnBeforeUnload even though you add return false; Even a link to javascript:void(0); causes OnBeforeUnload to be called. I had a major headache with this problem at work...

[Sikshya Maharjan]

@easwee, that's true, but I like to keep ie-specific amendments in their own file. Just to for the purposes of, y'know, hygiene and stuff... =b (oh, and I wasn't sure for which incarnation hand was used. And I truly hope there's no significant in-the-wild usage of IE5 these days...)

[Ross]

@Alxandr IE may well throw some obscure spanner in the works - that's what it does best. I've cited A List Apart above as this is their recommendation for onclick behaviour.

[Brian]

First off, welcome to SO, Lou! When posting/answering, please make sure to be as informative as possible and don't forget to format your code examples (as I have done for you).

[ZhekaKozlov]

This doesn't work. The cursor is changed to text instead of pointer in Chrome.

[Ross]

@ZhekaKozlov could you post an example of this not working? That would help figure out if it is 'this' or your implementation of it that doesn't work