[whatwg] [WF2] <button> without value="" should perhaps use .innerText as value

Simon Pieters zcorpan at gmail.com
Fri Apr 13 18:10:07 PDT 2007


We currently don't have interop with IE and other browsers with regards to  
what to send to the server as the value of <button>.

IE always sends .innerText as value.

Other browsers always send the contents of value="" as value, or the empty  
string if it's missing (as per HTML4).

There may be content on the Web relying on IE's behavior, e.g. missing  
value="" attribute. Still, the other browsers agree on using value="" and  
using value="" is useful (in order to send one value to the server but  
show different text to the user as button text), and is the way other form  
controls work.


A middle ground could be to use value="" if the attribute is present, or  
.innerText otherwise (pretty much like <option>).


Test cases for the above proposal:

    <form><button type=submit name=test value=PASS>FAIL</button></form>

    <form><button type=submit name=test>PASS</button></form>

-- 
Simon Pieters



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