jQuery: Capture anchor href onclick and submit asynchronously

Question

I almost never get to play with client-side stuff, and this presumably simple task is kicking my butt :)

I have some links. OnClick I want to prevent the default action, capture its href url, submit an ajax GET to that url, and simply alert() with the results ... but I can't even get past the starting line :)

Example anchors for play-time:

<a class="asynch_link" href="good/1.html">Click Here</a>
<a class="asynch_link" href="good/2.html">Click Here</a>

Now, I've played with a few suggestions for similar requests on SO, but the links still cause the browser to navigate to the href url.

Even with just

<script type="text/javascript">
    $('a').click(function (event) 
    { 
         event.preventDefault(); 
         //here you can also do all sort of things 
    });
</script>

...the links still navigate to the other page.

I'm kinda feeling like and infant here :)

Any and all help will be deeply appreciated.

And, yes, I AM including jQuery :)
<script src="//67.20.99.206/javascripts/jqueryCountdown/1-5-11/jquery.countdown.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>

Answer 1

$('a').click(function(event) { 
    event.preventDefault(); 
    $.ajax({
        url: $(this).attr('href'),
        success: function(response) {
            alert(response);
        }
    });
    return false; // for good measure
});