jQuery ui autocomplete - renderItem

Question

I am using _renderItem to modify the result list

.data( "autocomplete" )._renderItem = function( ul, item ) {
            var temp = item.url.substring(16, item.url.length)
            return $( "<li></li>" )
            .data( "item.autocomplete", item )
            .append( "<a>" + item.value + "<br>" + item.url + "<br>" + item.description + "<br>" + "Support URL: " + item.support_url + "<br>" + "Contact: " + "<a href=" + item.contact + ">Test</a>" + "<br />" + "</a>"  )
            .appendTo( ul )

This has the behavior of automatically marking up anything that looks like a url as an href. I'd like to make the entire item a link

in an older autocomplete that was done like this:

 .result(function(event, item) {
   location.href = item.url;
  });

But this does not seam to be supported any longer.

Does anyone know how I can either:

1) use something similar to the .result function and just make the entire item a link
or
2) modify the _renderItem so that it is not automatically turning strings that look like URLs into href's

Thank you.