On Mon, 5 May 2008 01:08:32 UTC, TaliesinSoft <taliesinsoft@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> A button on a website typically has three states commonly referred to as
> "normal", "over", and "click".
> [snip]
>
> I've noticed that there are two common behaviors for the "click" state.
The
> first is that the appearance of the button changes upon a mouse down and
the
> action takes place upon the subsequent mouse up. The second is that the
> action takes place upon the mouse up and there is no action for the
> subsequent mouse down.
>
> An example of the first "down/up" behavior is the Apple website which
can be
> seen at <www.apple.com>.
>
> An example of the second "up/only" behavior is a website I'm developing
> which can be seen at <http://homepage.mac.com/taliesinsoft/ECR/>.
>
> My query is to whether there is any agreed upon standard or convention
in
> regards to button behavior.
Your question (and the ensuing discussion) arises from an incorrect use
of terminology.
There is not a single button present on your ECR page. I assume that
what you're referring to as "buttons" are the menu items toward the
top of that page. They are links (HTML 'ANCHOR' elements) implemented
using GIFs. Links have long had several states to emphasize them such
as "over", "visited", etc. When implemented as text, the change in
emphasis is automatic; in the case of a graphic link, javascript is
needed to change the image to reflect the link's state.
HTML 'BUTTON' elements typically conform to the user's expectations
of how a pushbutton should look and act (e.g. they move up and down).
Buttons are usually used in forms ("Submit", "Clear", etc) and are
almost never used as links. Historically, buttons have never had
an "over" state. Late-model browsers may implement it, but only as
a convenience for the javascript programmer, not to provide visual
emphasis for the user.
So, to answer your question, there is an agreed upon standard for
button behavior but only a generally accepted convention for links.
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