ehentai, I'm going to agree with other people here. You shouldn't follow through with this method, and not only that, but it won't work correctly on all browsers
Besides, people are still able to view your source, if they were that adamant upon finding out the link; Even so, if they open the link in a new window, the address bar is going to show the location.
It's just something that's entirely unnecessary no matter the situation.
<a href="http://www.webmaster-talk.com" onmouseout="javascript:window.status=null;" onmouseover="javascript:window.status='your text for this link';">Great place!</a>
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Listen to the ducky: "This is awesome!!!"
I think JavaScript is the only way to do it. There are always loopholes though.
You can simply always see a "hidden link" like this by holding the click on the link (without letting go) and then you can see the full URL in your browser.
That has the benefit of hiding the link from the search engines ... because Google might consider that "spamdexing" and won't want you allowing PR to be passed on to pages you don't want your users to really know about.
Also, I would look at the URL ( FireBug makes this extremely easy ) before I didn't click it anyway. I'd probably leave the page I was on, too. That might sound drastic, but unless you have a really good and understandable reason to do it, that just doesn't inspire confidence.
ehentai it's obviously you're decision whether or not to do this, but I can tell you that if you don't let me see where the link is going I'm not clicking on it.
It would make me ask why you don't want to show me where the link is taking me and no matter what it is you're offering on the other side of that link someone else is probably offering it too a couple of clicks away.
Also anyone who still wants to see where the link goes can just view the source. You're really not hiding it.
As a general rule I'm fine with you doing things inside the browser window. I expect that what's inside the window is going to change when I interact with a site. Anything outside that window is off limits as far as I'm concerned and that extends to the status bar or the menu bar and even the scrollbars. if you change any of those it's the last time I ever visit your site and I know I'm not alone in this.