jQuery - opening all links on a page

Question

I'm trying to learn jQuery, to make up for my anemic javascript skills.

As a test project, I have a page full of links, and I want to have a button on the page open all the links in new tabs. The links all have target="_blank" attributes.

I'm using this

  $('button').click(function() {
    $('a').click();
  );}

I've tested the selector syntax by modifying the css of the links, so I'm sure that is ok. What do I need to change in order to get the link to open?

Answer 1

you can't manipulate tabs via javascript (you can ask a link to open in a new window, you just can't tell it to open in a tab). what you might want to try if you want to try is something like this:

$('button').click(function() {
  $('a').each(function() {
     window.open($(this).attr('href') );
  });
});

essentially, when <button> is clicked, for each <a> element, pass the href value to window.open. or basically, piles of open windows assuming you have no pop up blocker :)

your current code basically says, when you press <button>, activate the onclick() handler of all <a> elements.

edit: in response to comments, compare this code that mimics the OP's functionality:

$('a').click(function() {
// assign an event to a.onclick
  window.open($(this).attr('href') );
});

$('button').click(function() {
// when we press <button>, trigger a.onclick
  $('a').click();
});

because we declared an onclick() functionality first, we now have the same behaviour as my original code. (piles of open windows)