Coding with Jesse

buttons need type="submit" to submit in IE

December 26th, 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>

About the author

Jesse Skinner Hi, I'm Jesse Skinner. I work with development teams to speed up and stabilize web applications, reduce server costs, fix difficult bugs, modernize legacy applications, and improve developer productivity. I'd love to hear from you and see how I can make your life easier.