[whatwg] "The first submit button in a form is the form's default button"

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Wed Jul 13 05:54:48 PDT 2005


On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, Kornel Lesinski wrote:
> 
> Currently specs state:
>  "The first submit button in a form is the form's default button"
>  http://whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/#enter-submit
> 
> I think this is not useful.
> 
> Forms often have multiple submit buttons that perform actions on form 
> data and are not suitable as a default button ("remove this element", 
> and others like add, upload, lookup, etc.). In such cases LAST submit 
> button is more likely to be suitable as the default submit button. 
> Although there are forms, like PayPal login page, where neither first or 
> last submit button is suitable as default (first is creation of new 
> account and last is cancel).

I agree. However, browsers implement what the spec currently says, so 
there isn't much we can do about what the default default button is.


> I think it's important to add means of specifying which submit button is 
> the default.

This is on the list of features to consider for WF3.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'



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