The Future of the Web » buttons need type="submit" to submit in IE » Web Development with JavaScript, jQuery, PHP and MySQL

buttons need type="submit" to submit in IE
Dec 26 2008
In a typical round of doing Internet Explorer clean up at the end of a project, I had to figure out why my <button>Submit</button> wasn't submitting a form in IE.

I did a search on "html button" and went to the w3c HTML 4.01 specifications:

type = submit|button|reset [CI]

This attribute declares the type of the button. Possible values:

submit: Creates a submit button. This is the default value.
reset: Creates a reset button.
button: Creates a push button.

So the default is submit. But Internet Explorer has obviously forgotten this in IE6 and IE7. I found it worked without type="submit" in Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. I haven't tested in IE8 because I don't have it installed. Maybe someone wants to check it out? Here is a demo page.

So I guess we should get in the habit of using:
```
<button type="submit">Submit</button>
```
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Comments

1. Артём Курапов at 8:21pm on December 26, 2008

Yep, same thing. I guess I'll add it to my list of "why form is not submitting" list (in russian though)
http://kurapov.name/technology/ui/js/submitting_form/
2. Mark at 11:48pm on December 26, 2008

The default appears to be working in IE8 -- both forms in your demo page post just fine!
3. kangax at 10:46am on December 27, 2008

Yep, IE8 works
4. cnspider at 8:07pm on January 11, 2009

"<button type="submit">Submit</button>",IE8 works!
"<button>Submit</button>" not!
5. jack at 2:35pm on January 22, 2009

Why would you use <button> instead of <input>?

Are you guys new to web development? I thought you were supposed to be experts?

Use:
<input type="submit" value="Text to appear on button" />

And then you won't have to post to your blog and expose how inexperienced you are when you can't make a submit button work.

Ugh.
6. Jesse Skinner at 2:48pm on January 22, 2009

@jack I never used to use buttons either, I only started using buttons recently, hence the learning bump.

I like buttons. I think they're swell. What's wrong with buttons?
7. jack at 4:42pm on January 23, 2009

Buttons blow.
8. Kenneth Sundqvist at 9:53am on January 29, 2009

@jack

Not knowing when to use <button> instead of <input> makes YOU look really inexperienced.

I'm using it right now because I need to style the submit button with a sliding doors technique that works in FF3 and IE6+7.

<button><span><span>Jack is rude and ignorant</span></span></button>
9. jack at 11:03am on February 4, 2009

Umm, yeah, no.

Nesting spans because you have no skills _proves_ you are inexperienced, weak, and you have a gay porn mustache. Beat it.
10. Bob at 12:00pm on March 16, 2009

The world would be a better place w/o trolls like Jack.
11. jaycverg at 4:12am on April 22, 2009

hey guys, this is suppose to be a learning blog, heheeh, please stop that...

well i'm using <input type="submit" /> in my works since JSF's <h:commandButton /> generates that..
12. jaycverg at 4:18am on April 22, 2009

if you put <button /> tags inside a form, the values submitted will vary from browser to browwer. 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.
13. TWStyles at 4:30pm on March 26, 2010

I can't make the input type="submit" work if I use it the correct way or with buttons. It just is not working in IE 8. Works in everything but. I can use the a href link and it works fine. I can make it pop up using onclick but I can not make a regular input take me to another page of my site. IF YOU know how to do this, tell me what I am missing.
14. jaycverg at 1:09am on March 28, 2010

@TWStyles:

So what do you want to do? you wanna navigate to another page using a simple input button? If that is the case, in your server side code, you will check the submitted data then you can issue a redirect command to another page. If in case it is just a simple navigation w/o the need of data submitted, you can use a javascript to change the location.href property.
15. Are you for serious at 11:02pm on September 23, 2010

Are you for serious that submit buttons don't work in IE 6 and 7 unless you have type="submit"? Shooot. Now I hafta set up some test environment or other. IE 6,7 dont run on Windows 7. I bet I've been losing mad stupid conversions.
16. daisy at 4:18pm on October 12, 2010

Hey Jack, get off your high horse and stop being an ass. If you can't contribute to help people, keep quiet.
17. David at 10:44pm on November 10, 2010

@TWStyles: maybe you have a <form> within a <form>? IE tends not to like that... In any case you shouldn't be using a submit input to navigate to another page on the site unless you are submitting search parameters in a GET request, that is what the A tag is for.

@Jack: You might be nesting a span because you want your button to be variable width but use a single background image. Your presumptuousness about people's skill level is appalling.
18. Dale Wastell at 12:01pm on January 27, 2011

epic troll
19. Dale Wastell at 12:08pm on January 27, 2011

management
20. Andrew Fisher at 12:59pm on April 11, 2011

IE8 gets this right most of the time... but if your site is in the Local Intranet zone the default for a button is still type="button" in IE8!
21. Progys at 9:16am on April 21, 2011

In IE8 it works, but IE 7 fails submitting if type is not set.
Thanks for this post, it saved my day!
22. Peter at 7:20am on May 13, 2011

thanks!
23. Ryan at 2:08am on May 31, 2011

This helped a lot. Thanks!
24. FFF at 3:59am on June 3, 2011

Where is Jack? lol
25. Dave at 1:20am on September 29, 2011

Five top reasons to use <button> tags:
1) they may contain (more or less) arbitrary HTML, making them cool
2) they are more easily styled than <input> tags
3) If you use Dean Edwards excellent script, IE7.js, then they will behave properly in all versions of IE (assuming js is enabled)...making them identical to their <input> counterparts, but more flexible
4) They are semantically 'cleaner'
5) They are getting a huge facelift in HTML5
Nuf said.

PS. I've been building websites since before Jack was in diapers.
26. Andy at 11:48pm on February 4, 2012

Great! Finally I fix the problem!

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