e.preventDefault not executing

Question

In the following code e.preventdefault(); isn't working, the browser is visiting the anchors href anyway. I can see the first alert, but after that the browser follows the href link of the anchor. I've read this (similiar) question on Stackoverflow, but it isn't really helping me: e.preventdefault(); not working

Any ideas on what i'm doing wrong or how I can fix it? Thanks in advance.

$('body').delegate('a.newslink', 'click', function(e) {
    alert('start');
    e.preventDefault();
    $.get( $(this).attr('href'), function(data) {
        alert(data);
        $('.reader').replaceWith(data); 
        $('#article-menu').removeClass('open');
        $('#article-menu').addClass('closed');
        $('#newslist').animate({height:'0px'}, 200);
    });
}); 

Answer 1

Try making the preventDefault call the first thing you do. The alert might be getting in the way.

Also because this is a delegated event, you might need to call e.stopPropagation as well.

Finally, I am not 100% sure in this case, but the event may not be cancelable (check the value of e.cancelable). See https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/event.preventDefault