RE: Links VS Buttons in native mobile apps

I was just using a native app that opened my mobile browser -- so it does happen that there are true links in mobile apps.  There are also places where you have links within paragraphs of text -- perhaps to footnotes, etc. which feel like they should continue to be links as well.  But in general most interactions on mobile apps would be a button rather than a link if it opened a modal or changed a screen or disclosed some content.

Marcy Sutton wrote an article on the general topic of links and buttons several years ago https://marcysutton.com/links-vs-buttons-in-modern-web-applications.  The general ideas would still apply.

Historically folks have not agreed on whether marking something as a link which may be a button would actually be a WCAG failure -- but most people do consider that at minimum it would be a usability issue which could cause confusion.   I don't think it would be a barrier to access something.  Links and buttons would be in different iOS rotor settings -- but other than that access and operation would be the same.

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick H. Lauke <redux@splintered.co.uk> 
Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2019 1:50 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Links VS Buttons in native mobile apps

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On 03/12/2019 23:28, Murphy, Sean wrote:
> All,
>
> I wish to know if anyone has done any research for native mobile apps 
> in relation to the usage of buttons vs links to present new content. 
> To clarify, the mobile app is pure native code and is not a app which 
> is a wrapper for a Web Technology contained  with in an app or a page 
> loaded in the mobile browser.
>
> Discussions in the past have mention (in summary): Links on a web page 
> are used to open a new web page. If the link opens in a new browser 
> tab or window, then applying the statement of link opens in a new 
> window is recommended.
>
> Native aps really don’t use this concept. Thus why seeking information 
> on the usage of links in a native app.
>
> I hope someone can point myself in the right direction.

I would say that the general expectation when inside a native application and activating something is that as a user I'll still be inside the native app.

The distinction between "link" and "button" isn't that strong in the context of native itself, as "button"s navigate to other views regularly in native apps, having less of a "links to navigate, buttons to execute in-page functionality" that we have for web content.

However, when I activate something and it suddenly launches my separate native platform browser, that can be a bit surprising. But I'd say the idea here is the same: if it's a link/control that will open a separate application (like the browser), I'd say it's recommended to add some kind of hint about it (e.g. "opens in your browser", or something a bit more subtle/less space consuming). But I wouldn't necessarily say it's a hard requirement, and we're more in best practice territory.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Thursday, 5 December 2019 22:40:49 UTC