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HTML HTML Forms Form Basics The Button Element

Posted by franckmc
franckmc
9,095 Points

Input type submit or Button type submit

Hi, everyone

I just saw on MDN that the input tag can have the attribute type set to "submit".

Is there a difference between using the input tag with the attribute type and its value set to submit:

<input type="submit" value="Sign Up">

and the button tag with the attribute type and its value set to submit ?

<button type='submit'>Sign Up</button>

3 Answers

Iain Simmons
MOD
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points
Iain Simmons
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points

Hi franckmc, here's a useful article on CSS tricks that will hopefully help to answer your question: When To Use The Button Element.

And for the record Liam Maclachlan, you can definitely style the button element with CSS! It can also contain other content/child elements, such as images, which can also be styled.

Liam Maclachlan
Liam Maclachlan
22,805 Points

Hey man. Thanks for the correction.

Don't know why I thought that but I was definitely wrong on that one :)

Dani Ivanov
Dani Ivanov
10,732 Points
Dani Ivanov
Dani Ivanov
10,732 Points

I think the input type submit has wider support across browsers as it is an older tag than button.

Have a look at the browser compatibility table over here (near the end of the page)

Input https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/HTML/Element/Input

Button https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/button

Liam Maclachlan
Liam Maclachlan
22,805 Points
Liam Maclachlan
Liam Maclachlan
22,805 Points

Personally I prefer using the input type. Not only for what Daniel mentions but you can format it to look how you want it to using CSS.

I don't believe that button can be formatted using css :)