[html] Making a <button> that's a link in HTML

Basically, I like the way that <input type="submit"> is styled, with the clickable button when you add a little CSS. However, regular buttons are not styled as such, they have no such clickability without some major CSS or JS, and you have to use images.

I made submit buttons into links, by using the form action, but this requires me to make a new form for each button. How can I find a happy medium? Using multiple forms is causing problems in my styling that I can't seem to fix unless I find another way to make buttons that are links in HTML, that have a default style that makes them have a pressed state (and I don't mean browser default settings).

Any ideas?

A little bit easier and it looks exactly like the button in the form. Just use the input and wrap the anchor tag around it.

<a href="#"><input type="button" value="Button Text"></a>

Use javascript:

<button onclick="window.location.href='/css_page.html'">CSS page</button>

You can always style the button in css anyaways. Hope it helped!

Good luck!

IMPORTANT: <button> should never be a descendent of <a>.

Try <a href="http://stackoverflow.com"><button>Link Text</button></a> in any html validator like https://validator.w3.org and you'll get an error. There's really no point in using a button if you're not using the button. Just style the <a> with css to look like a button. If you're using a framework like Bootstrap, you could apply the button style(s) btn, btn-primary etc.

jsfiddle : button styled link

.btnStack {_x000D_
  font-family: Oswald;_x000D_
  background-color: orange;_x000D_
  color: white;_x000D_
  text-decoration: none;_x000D_
  display: inline-block;_x000D_
  padding: 6px 12px;_x000D_
  margin-bottom: 0;_x000D_
  font-size: 14px;_x000D_
  font-weight: normal;_x000D_
  line-height: 1.428571429;_x000D_
  text-align: center;_x000D_
  white-space: nowrap;_x000D_
  vertical-align: middle;_x000D_
  cursor: pointer;_x000D_
  border: 1px solid transparent;_x000D_
  border-radius: 4px;_x000D_
  -webkit-user-select: none;_x000D_
  -moz-user-select: none;_x000D_
  -ms-user-select: none;_x000D_
  -o-user-select: none;_x000D_
  user-select: none;_x000D_
}_x000D_
_x000D_
a.btnStack:hover {_x000D_
  background-color: #000;_x000D_
}

<link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Oswald:400' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>_x000D_
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com" class="btnStack">stackoverflow.com</a>

The 3 easiest ways IMHO are

1: you create an image of a button and put a href around it. (Not a good way, you lose flexibility and will provide a lot of difficulties and problems.)

2 (The easiest one) -> JQuery

<input type="submit" someattribute="http://yoururl/index.php">

  $('button[type=submit] .default').click(function(){
     window.location = $(this).attr("someattribute");
     return false; //otherwise it will send a button submit to the server

   });  

3 (also easy but I prefer previous one):

<INPUT TYPE=BUTTON OnClick="somefunction("http://yoururl");return false" VALUE="somevalue">

$fn.somefunction= function(url) {
    window.location = url;
};

You have three options:

• Style links to look like buttons using CSS.

  Just look at the light blue "tags" under your question.

  It is possible, even to give them a depressed appearance when clicked (using pseudo-classes like :active), without any scripting. Lots of major sites, such as Google, are starting to make buttons out of CSS styles these days anyway, scripting or not.

• Put a separate <form> element around each one.

  As you mentioned in the question. Easy and will definitely work without Javascript (or even CSS). But it adds a little extra code which may look untidy.

• Rely on Javascript.

  Which is what you said you didn't want to do.