Re-directing to dynamic href in PHP script using JavaScript - php

Question

I have a drop down user menu that contains child links that I cannot get to redirect properly. I unfortunately did not code the front-end, so I'm just trying to get it to link to dynamic PHP urls. I'm also working within the CodeIgniter framework, by the way. There are two clicks in the user's process (similar to Google's user icon). 1. You click the user image and drop down arrow, 2. You see profile, settings, logout.
With the following script, clicking the drop-down arrow redirects to the first link, profile, without even doing the drop-down animation. Any thoughts?
Here's the PHP file:
<div class="user css3">
<img src="images/user.jpg" alt="user" class="css3" />
<div class="child css3">
<ul class="user_links">
<li>Profile</li>
<li>Settings</li>
<li>Logout</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
Here's the JavaScript for drop-down arrow button:
$('div.user').click(function() {
$('div.user div.child').slideToggle("fast");
$('div.live div.action div.category div.child, div.live div.action div.sort div.child').slideUp();
return false;
});
Here's the JavaScript that I came up with for the <ul> (I'm not much of a JS dev. haha):
$('ul.user_links li a').click(function() {
document.location($(this).attr("href"));
});
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

I said in the comments:
Remove the js for the <ul>, and then return false from the other block, and it should work.
Here is why: when you click an anchor, the event starts propagating upwards through the document structure (the DOM). When it reaches another element wired to catch the click event, it runs this element's event handler.
When you click the anchor, the click handler on div.user runs. The last statement there, return false, means "stop the event propagation, and prevent the default behavior". On an anchor, the default behavior would be to follow the link. Your code told the browser not to do it.

Answer 2

Not sure if this is the root cause, but anyways use:
window.location = $(this).attr("href");
Instead of
document.location($(this).attr("href"));

Answer 3

try adding an onclick event to the drop down that returns false, thus stopping the default action for links.
<img src="images/user.jpg" alt="user" class="css3" />
Or changing it so it's just a 'span' tag instead of a 'a' tag. You'd have to change the JQuery selector that causes the drop down as well so that it looks for 'span' instead of 'a'
I'm not sure why you need change the default behaviour of the links 3 links though, they would redirect to the href location anyway surely?