Multiple submit buttons on HTML form – designate one button as default

I have a form that has three submit buttons as follows:

<input type="submit" name="COMMAND" value="&lsaquo; Prev">
<input type="submit" name="COMMAND" value="Save">
<input type="reset"  name="NOTHING" value="Reset">
<input type="submit" name="COMMAND" value="Next &rsaquo;">
<input type="button" name="NOTHING" value="Skip &rsaquo;" onclick="location = 'yada-yada.asp';">

The row of buttons is a mix of submit, reset and JavaScript buttons. The order of buttons is subject to change, but in any case the save button remains between prev and next buttons.

The problem here is that when a user hits Enter to submit the form, the post variable "COMMAND" contains "Prev"; normal, as this is the first submit button on the form. I however want the "Next" button to be triggered when the user submits the form via the Enter button. It is kind of like setting it as the default submit button, even though there are other buttons before it.

The first button is always the default; it can't be changed. Whilst you can try to fix it up with JavaScript, the form will behave unexpectedly in a browser without scripting, and there are some usability/accessibility corner cases to think about. For example, the code linked to by Zoran will accidentally submit the form on Enter press in a <input type="button">, which wouldn't normally happen, and won't catch IE's behaviour of submitting the form for Enter press on other non-field content in the form. So if you click on some text in a <p> in the form with that script and press Enter, the wrong button will be submitted... especially dangerous if, as given in that example, the real default button is ‘Delete’!

My advice would be to forget about using scripting hacks to reassign defaultness. Go with the flow of the browser and just put the default button first. If you can't hack the layout to give you the on-screen order you want, then you can do it by having a dummy invisible button first in the source, with the same name/value as the button you want to be default:

<input type="submit" class="defaultsink" name="COMMAND" value="Save" />

.defaultsink {
    position: absolute; left: -100%;
}

(note: positioning is used to push the button off-screen because display: none and visibility: hidden have browser-variable side-effects on whether the button is taken as default and whether it's submitted.)

My suggestion is don't fight this behaviour. You can effectively alter the order using floats. For example:

<p id="buttons">
<input type="submit" name="next" value="Next">
<input type="submit" name="prev" value="Previous">
</p>

with:

#buttons { overflow: hidden; }
#buttons input { float: right; }

will effectively reverse the order and thus the "Next" button will be the value triggered by hitting enter.

This kind of technique will cover many circumstances without having to resort to more hacky JavaScript methods.

Set type=submit to the button you'd like to be default and type=button to other buttons. Now in the form below you can hit Enter in any input fields, and the Render button will work (despite the fact it is the second button in the form).

Example:

    <button id='close_button' class='btn btn-success'
            type=button>
      <span class='glyphicon glyphicon-edit'> </span> Edit program
    </button>
    <button id='render_button' class='btn btn-primary'
            type=submit>             <!--  Here we use SUBMIT, not BUTTON -->
      <span class='glyphicon glyphicon-send'> </span> Render
    </button>

Tested in FF24 and Chrome 35.

Quick'n'dirty you could create an hidden duplicate of the submit-button, which should be used, when pressing enter.

Example CSS

input.hidden {
    width: 0px;
    height: 0px;
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    outline: none;
    border: 0px;
}

Example HTML

<input type="submit" name="next" value="Next" class="hidden" />
<input type="submit" name="prev" value="Previous" />
<input type="submit" name="next" value="Next" />

If someone now hits enter in your form, the (hidden) next-button will be used as submitter.

Tested on IE9, Firefox, Chrome and Opera

If you're using jQuery, this solution from a comment made here is pretty slick:

$(function(){
    $('form').each(function () {
        var thisform = $(this);
        thisform.prepend(thisform.find('button.default').clone().css({
            position: 'absolute',
            left: '-999px',
            top: '-999px',
            height: 0,
            width: 0
        }));
    });
});

Just add class="default" to the button you want to be the default. It puts a hidden copy of that button right at the beginning of the form.

I'm resurrecting this because I was researching a non-JavaScript way to do this. I wasn't into the key handlers, and the CSS positioning stuff was causing tab ordering to break since CSS repositioning doesn't change tab order.

My solution is based on the response at https://stackoverflow.com/a/9491141.

The solution source is below. tabindex is used to correct tab behaviour of the hidden button, as well as aria-hidden to avoid having the button read out by screen readers / identified by assistive devices.

<form method="post" action="">
  <button type="submit" name="useraction" value="2nd" class="default-button-handler" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></button>
  <div class="form-group">
    <label for="test-input">Focus into this input: </label>
    <input type="text" id="test-input" class="form-control" name="test-input" placeholder="Focus in here and press enter / go" />
  </div>

1st button in DOM 2nd button in DOM 3rd button in DOM

Essential CSS for this solution:

.default-button-handler {
  width: 0;
  height: 0;
  padding: 0;
  border: 0;
  margin: 0;
}

Another solution, using jQuery:

$(document).ready(function() {
  $("input").keypress(function(e) {
    if (e.which == 13) {
      $('#submit').click();
      return false;
    }

    return true;
  });
});

This should work on the following forms, making "Update" the default action:

<form name="f" method="post" action="/action">
  <input type="text" name="text1" />
  <input type="submit" name="button2" value="Delete" />
  <input type="submit" name="button1" id="submit" value="Update" />
</form>

As well as:

<form name="f" method="post" action="/action">
  <input type="text" name="text1" />
  <button type="submit" name="button2">Delete</button>
  <button type="submit" name="button1" id="submit">Update</button>
</form>

This traps the Enter key only when an input field on the form has focus.

You should not be using buttons of the same name. It's bad semantics. Instead, you should modify your backend to look for different name values being set:

<input type="submit" name="COMMAND_PREV" value="&lsaquo; Prev">
<input type="submit" name="COMMAND_SAVE" value="Save">
<input type="reset"  name="NOTHING" value="Reset">
<input type="submit" name="COMMAND_NEXT" value="Next &rsaquo;">
<input type="button" name="NOTHING" value="Skip &rsaquo;" onclick="window.location = 'yada-yada.asp';">

Since I don't know what language you are using on the backend, I'll give you some pseudocode:

if (input name COMMAND_PREV is set) {

} else if (input name COMMAND_SAVE is set) {

} else if (input name COMMENT_NEXT is set) {

}

bobince's solution has the downside of creating a button which can be Tab-d over, but otherwise unusable. This can create confusion for keyboard users.

A different solution is to use the little-known form attribute:

<form>
	<input name="data" value="Form data here">
	<input type="submit" name="do-secondary-action" form="form2" value="Do secondary action">
	<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

<form id="form2"></form>

This is standard HTML, however unfortunately not supported in Internet Explorer.