How to stop auto-refresh onclick from thumbnails? - image

Question

I have an image gallery on my site that uses thumbnails that enlarge above the thumbnail line when clicked on. I'm having an issue with the auto-refresh; every time I click one of the thumbnails, the page refreshes, which restores it to the "master image".
I'm not (and sort of refuse, on the grounds that I believe all this can be done with simple CSS and HTML) using anything fancy to write this code, despite my knowledge of HTML being amateur at best.
Here's a sample of the code. Let me know if you need to see a different piece of it.
<div id="rightcol">
<img name="ImageOnly. src='#' /><img src="#" />
</div>
<div id="leftcol"> <div>
<a href="" onclick="ImageOnly.src='#'"><img src="#" />
</div>
Edit: Somehow I seem to have fixed this issue by changing
<a href="" onclick="ImageOnly.src='#'">
to
<a href="#" onclick="ImageOnly.src='#'">
Not really sure why this worked but would love an explanation...?

Answer 1

Why not just use some simple ajax/javascript .innerHTML? instead of trying to stop the auto refresh that occurs when you click on a hyperlink that has #. That way you could update the rightcol synchroniously.
HTML
<div id="rightcol">
<img name="ImageOnly.src" src='#' />
</div>
<div id="leftcol">
<img src="#" />
</div>
AJAX Script
function ajaxMove(src)
{
var image = '<img src="'+src+'" alt="my transferred image" />';
document.getElementById('rightcol').innerHTML = image;
}
How is it used?
Request the object from the onclick event.
Build an image tag based off the information in the object.
Transfer the new image tag to the element with the id 'rightcol'
Other options
You could also remove the href="#" from the <a> tag and work directly from the onclick event and then apply style="cursor:pointer;". Then it will work like a regular hyperlink but without the refresh.
<a onclick="javascript:ajaxMove('ImageOnly.src')" style="cursor:pointer;" >Click Me</a>