What disadvantages are there to the <button>

Question

I started using a diagnostic css stylesheet, e.g. http://snipplr.com/view/6770/css-diagnostics--highlight-deprecated-html-with-css--more/

One of the suggested rules highlights input tags with the type submit, with the recommendation to use <button> as a more semantic solution. What are the advantages or disadvantages of <button> with type submit (such as with browser compatibility) that you have run across?

Just to be clear, I understand the spec of <button>, it has a defined start and end, it can contain various elements, whereas input is a singlet and can't contain stuff. What I want to know essentially is whether it's broken or not. I'd like to know how usable button is at the current time. The first answer below does seem to imply that it is broken for uses except outside of forms, unfortunately.

Edit for 2015

The landscape has changed! I have 6 more years experience of dealing with button now, and browsers have somewhat moved on from IE6 and IE7. So I'll add an answer that details what I found out and what I suggest.

Answer 1

Answering from an ASP.NET perspective.

I was excited when I found this question and some code for a ModernButton control, which, in the end, is a <button> control.

So I started adding all sorts of these buttons, decorated with <img /> tags inside of them to make them stand out. And it all worked great... in Firefox, and Chrome.

Then I tried IE6 and got the "a potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected", because IE6 submits the html inside of the button, which, in my case, has html tags in it. I don't want to disable the validateRequest flag, because I like this added bit of data validation.

So then I wrote some javascript to disable that button before the submit occurred. Worked great in a test page, with one button, but when I tried it out on a real page, that had other <button> tags, it blew up again. Because IE6 submits ALL of the buttons' html. So now I have all sorts of code to disable buttons before submit.

Same problems with IE7. IE8 thankfully has this fixed.

Yikes. I'd recommend not going down this road IF you are using ASP.NET.

Update:

I found a library out there that looks promising to fix this.

If you use the ie8.js script from this library: http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/

It might work out just fine. The IE8.js brings IE5-7 up to speed with IE8 with the button tag. It makes the submitted value the real value and only one button gets submitted.

Answer 2

You might also run into these problems:

• jQuery cannot target the button (not jQuery's fault, though): <button> in IE7
• Multiple request variables if there are >1 <button>s: http://www.peterbe.com/plog/button-tag-in-IE

Another thing is related to styling it using the sliding-door technique: you need to insert another tag e.g. <span> to make it work.

Answer 3

Pros:

• The display label does not have to be the same as the submitted value. Great for i18n and "Delete this row"
• You can include markup such as <em> and <img>

Cons:

• Some versions of MSIE default to type="button" instead of type="submit" so you have to be explicit
• Some versions of MSIE will treat all <button>s as successful so you can't tell which one was clicked in a multi-submit button form
• Some versions of MSIE will submit the display text instead of the real value

Answer 4

Is it broken or not:

As usual, the answer is "it works fine in all major browsers, but has the following quirks in IE." I don't think it will be a problem for you though.

The <button> tag is supported by all the major browsers. The only support problem lies in what Internet Explorer will submit upon pressing a button.

The major browsers will submit the content of the value attribute. Internet exploter will submit the text between the <button> and </button> tags, while also submitting the value of every other one in the form, instead just the one you clicked.

For your purposes, just cleaning up old HTML, this shouldn't be a problem.

Sources:

1. http://www.peterbe.com/plog/button-tag-in-IE
2. http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp

Answer 5

When using <button> always specify the type, since browsers default to different types.

This will work consistently across all browser:

• <button type="submit">...</button>
• <button type="button">...</button>

This way you gain all of <button>'s goodness, no downsides.

Answer 6

Everything you need to know: W3Schools <button> Tag

The tag is supported in all major browsers.

Important: If you use the button element in an HTML form, different browsers will submit different values. Internet Explorer will submit the text between the <button> and </button> tags, while other browsers will submit the content of the value attribute. Use the input element to create buttons in an HTML form.