July 28, 2026
Buttoned up? Not even close
The Difference Between a Button and a Link
Web nerds are fighting over one tiny click — and the comments are on fire
TLDR: A web proposal wants buttons to get simple built-in actions, so websites can rely less on extra scripting. Commenters instantly split between “finally, this is overdue” and “we already have this,” turning a tiny design tweak into a surprisingly heated fight about how clicks should work.
A deceptively small idea — letting a button behave more like a self-contained action trigger without extra page code — has turned into a full-on comment-section showdown. The article argues that buttons and links are not the same thing: a link is like an address you can copy, share, bookmark, or open in a new tab, while a button is more like a command that happens right here, right now. Simple, right? Apparently not. The crowd immediately split into camps, with one side cheering, “Finally, the web shouldn’t need so many workarounds,” and the other rolling their eyes that this can already be done today with a form.
That tension is where the fun starts. One commenter basically said, why invent a new trick when the old one already works? Another fired back with pure hype, calling it a step toward “native HTMX” — nerd-speak for “the browser finally doing more useful stuff on its own.” Then came the semantics police: if it sends you somewhere else, one commenter insisted, it’s a link no matter what it looks like. In other words, this wasn’t just a feature request — it became a philosophical brawl over what clicking even means on the internet.
And yes, the jokes landed too. One person deadpanned, “Is this too tech for Hacker News? LOL,” which is exactly the kind of self-aware comment that tells you everyone knew they were arguing about the world’s tiniest hill. But that’s the magic of web debates: one little button, and suddenly everyone’s acting like civilization depends on it.
Key Points
- •The article presents Button Actions as an HTML proposal to add `action` and `method` attributes directly to the `<button>` element.
- •It argues that links represent destinations, which allows browsers to support features like opening in a new tab, bookmarking, sharing, and copying.
- •It states that buttons represent actions in a fixed browsing context and therefore do not support the same re-contextualization features as links.
- •The article says it is incorrect to define links only as navigation tools and buttons only as non-navigation controls.
- •It concludes that navigations should be represented as buttons when the action must stay in a fixed context and should not be shareable, bookmarkable, or openable elsewhere.