Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-ui] Change appearance: button to only apply to buttons (#5174)

People will then just be forced to use empty forms to make “links” that can’t be opened in a new tab/window, and with no ability to see their URLs in advance. Such button is technically a button, but in fact is a link. Making a link button is technically possible, the resulting links are just not as usable as true links. Is that good?

Fwiw, the [russian version](https://tanalin.com/blog/2013/03/link-button/) of my [blog post](https://tanalin.com/en/blog/2013/03/link-button/) about making a link look like a native button, has about 60-70 visits daily and is consistently the  **most popular** page of my site for years.

> <tantek> I'm a bit surprised this is being re-opened without new information. one random github comment is not new information

There were _two_ comments actually. And mine was probably not about new information, but at least about that a **wrong type** of stats (using the `appearance` property itself for making a link look like a button) was used for making the whole decision. As I said, it would probably be more reasonable and useful to make the decision based on stats of:

* styling links to mimic buttons (GitHub is an example);
* using an empty form for that purpose (the _only_ way to make a link look like a _true_ native button, not just _similarly_).

That stats would be not about _how_ the goal is achieved (good developers tend to avoid using nonstandard features), but about _what_ people want to achieve. And I’m not sure collecting stats of cases of styling links to mimic buttons would be easy/possible in an automated way.

> astearns: I'd like a narrower issue and to close the older one

Does such a new narrower issue already exist?

P.S. The IRC log is confusing and hard to read. Why is it `<dael> florian: ` and not `<florian>`? It’s also unclear who each of the conversation participants is except for ones I personally historically know (while other readers might not) like bkardell_, fantasai, florian, tantek, zcorpan_. Some accompanying legend would be helpful for each of such IRC logs.

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Received on Wednesday, 18 November 2020 18:50:37 UTC