How do i stop the form from reloading using Javascript?

When a User Submits the form i want to stop the default behavior of the form. ie it should not reload. so that i can perform the AJAX request.

here is the code i used.

<script type="text/javascript">
    function validateForm()
    {
        return false;
    }
</script>
<form action="" name="contact" onsubmit="validateForm();">
    <input type="text" name="name" value="Enter Your Name..."/>
    <input type="submit" name="submit"/>
</form>

this does not stop the form from being submitted or reloaded. how do i achieve this?

It needs to be onsubmit="return validateForm()"

You can use the onsubmit attribute as suggested, a more unobtrusive way is to use preventDefault() on the event object passed to the function bound to your onsubmit event:

function validateForm(e) {
    if (e.preventDefault) {
       e.preventDefault();
    }
    e.returnValue = false; // for IE
}

This only works if you bind the event listener to the form, instead of having onsubmit inline.

Edit: here's how you could bind an event listener to the form, which when triggered will pass an Event object (note this is the W3C style, this won't work in IE, but will give you an idea):

var form = document.getElementById('myform');
form.addEventListener('submit', validateForm, false);

When the submit event is triggered, it will call the validateForm function, passing the event object. Here's a really good article on Javascript events:

http://www.quirksmode.org/js/introevents.html