Suppress anchor tag <a> href when using jquery
I have the following code:

      <script type="text/javascript">
    
      $(document).ready(function() 
      {
        $("#thang").load("http://www.yahoo.com");
    
        $(".SmoothLink").click( function()
        {
          $("#thang").fadeOut();
          
          $("#thang").load($(this).attr("href"));           
          
          $("#thang").fadeIn();
          
        });
      });

      </script>

      <a href="http://www.google.com" id="thelink" class="SmoothLink">click here</a><br /><br />
      <div style="border: 1px solid blue;" id="thang">
      </div>

What I am trying to achieve is a quick and easy way to ajax-ify a website by simply putting a class on certain links that I want to load up into a div.  The problem I am having is that the normal anchor action is being triggered and just redirecting to the link href normally.  How do I suppress the normal anchor action?
Suppress anchor tag <a> href when using jquery
===

I have the following code:

      <script type="text/javascript">
    
      $(document).ready(function() 
      {
        $("#thang").load("http://www.yahoo.com");
    
        $(".SmoothLink").click( function()
        {
          $("#thang").fadeOut();
          
          $("#thang").load($(this).attr("href"));           
          
          $("#thang").fadeIn();
          
        });
      });

      </script>

      <a href="http://www.google.com" id="thelink" class="SmoothLink">click here</a><br /><br />
      <div style="border: 1px solid blue;" id="thang">
      </div>

What I am trying to achieve is a quick and easy way to ajax-ify a website by simply putting a class on certain links that I want to load up into a div.  The problem I am having is that the normal anchor action is being triggered and just redirecting to the link href normally.  How do I suppress the normal anchor action?