ARTICLE SUMMARY: There is a great debate going on at the moment over whether to use buttons or links and it bears a closer look to understand both sides of the debate.
For those of you who haven’t given a lot of thought about this issue “BUTTONS VS. LINKS” is a must read for you. Web Accessibility Expert Eric Eggert goes into great detail on why you need to know and things you need to know about them. Things like
- What are links?
- What are buttons?
- What are the differences between links and buttons?
As designers we should know the difference between the two and the correct way to use them in our design. As a user if you depend on the role of the element every day, like screen reader or speech input users do, the reliability of these very common elements is key.
Eric Eggert concludes his article saying “Buttons and links are functionally different, but their styling can be similar. Use the proper tool for the job and remember that links go somewhere while buttons do something, if you style them similarly, make sure that the functionality is clear from the context.
This is a great read, let us know where you stand in this debate in the comments.
