![]() The same principles apply to links and buttons for styling. Buttons use the normal mouse pointer arrow, while links trigger the use of the pointing hand mouse pointer.Īs a developer, it is important to embrace that difference and know about it, as you can much easier meet user expectations that way.Screen readers have a function to present a list of links to their users.Buttons can be activated by pressing return or space.Links can be activated by pressing the return key only.Not only that links go somewhere and buttons do something, but also their interactivity: Having these different roles means there are different user expectations. Links are (shockingly accurately) announced as “links”, while buttons are announced as (you might have guessed it by now) “buttons”. What are the differences between links and buttons?įirst, they have two different roles, so assistive technologies announce them differently. Without JavaScript, the usefulness of buttons is severely limited. Basically, a button would always be used either in a form or with JavaScript. ![]() Show/hide something? A button can do that. ![]() Have a calculator on the site? A great use for buttons. With the element, buttons can now be used for functionality all over the site that does not lead a user somewhere else. While you can get redirected after a form submission, back in the day, the website would often just stay on the same URL and display a success message. Later, HTML introduced the element, which allowed more versatility of buttons outside of forms. When they were introduced as a variant of the element, their sole purpose was to submit forms. In addition, some links only bring you to a different section of the same page, which is useful, for example navigating footnotes 1īuttons perform an action. When you hover over the link with the mouse, you can also see the destination of the link in the status bar. Links give you also several additional options in the right click menu: Opening the target page in a new window or tab, download the linked page, copy the link. If the browser can’t display the file, it gets downloaded. In essence, the link changes what the URL in the browser points to and then displays that website or file. There is some additional functionality, like the ability to point to different frames in a “frame set” (yup, you can still do that!) or forcing a download of a file. Links are interactive elements that usually link to another document, for example: Click this link to go to Knowbility’s website. Let’s take a look to see what these two UI elements are and what they do, and then, how they can look. Should some links look like buttons, or should some buttons look like links? Twitter was all up in arms about this issue this week.
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