Submitting a form by pressing enter without a submit button

Well I am trying to submit a form by pressing enter but not displaying a submit button. I don't want to get into JavaScript if possible since I want everything to work on all browsers (the only JS way I know is with events).

Right now the form looks like this:

<form name="loginBox" target="#here" method="post">
    <input name="username" type="text" /><br />
    <input name="password" type="password" />
    <input type="submit" style="height: 0px; width: 0px; border: none; padding: 0px;" hidefocus="true" />
</form>

Which works pretty well. The submit button works when the user presses enter, and the button doesn't show in Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera and Chrome. However, I still don't like the solution since it is hard to know whether it will work on all platforms with all browsers.

Can anyone suggest a better method? Or is this about as good as it gets?

Update 2022: Use this instead

<input type="submit" hidden />

---

Notice - Outdated answer
Please do not use position: absolute in the year 2021+. It's recommended to use the hidden attribute instead. Otherwise, look down below and pick a better, more modern, answer.

Try:

<input type="submit" style="position: absolute; left: -9999px"/>

That will push the button waaay to the left, out of the screen. The nice thing with this is, you'd get graceful degradation when CSS is disabled.

Update - Workaround for IE7

As suggested by Bryan Downing + with tabindex to prevent tab reach this button (by Ates Goral):

<input type="submit" 
       style="position: absolute; left: -9999px; width: 1px; height: 1px;"
       tabindex="-1" />

I think you should go the Javascript route, or at least I would:

<script type="text/javascript">
// Using jQuery.

$(function() {
    $('form').each(function() {
        $(this).find('input').keypress(function(e) {
            // Enter pressed?
            if(e.which == 10 || e.which == 13) {
                this.form.submit();
            }
        });

        $(this).find('input[type=submit]').hide();
    });
});
</script>


<form name="loginBox" target="#here" method="post">
    <input name="username" type="text" /><br />
    <input name="password" type="password" />
    <input type="submit" />
</form>

Have you tried this ?

<input type="submit" style="visibility: hidden;" />

Since most browsers understand visibility:hidden and it doesn't really work like display:none, I'm guessing that it should be fine, though. Haven't really tested it myself, so CMIIW.

Another solution without the submit button:

HTML

<form>
  <input class="submit_on_enter" type="text" name="q" placeholder="Search...">
</form>

jQuery

$(document).ready(function() {

  $('.submit_on_enter').keydown(function(event) {
    // enter has keyCode = 13, change it if you want to use another button
    if (event.keyCode == 13) {
      this.form.submit();
      return false;
    }
  });

});

For anyone looking at this answer in future, HTML5 implements a new attribute for form elements, hidden, which will automatically apply display:none to your element.

e.g.

<input type="submit" hidden />

Use following code, this fixed my problem in all 3 browsers (FF, IE and Chrome):

<input  type="submit" name="update" value=" Apply " 
    style="position: absolute; height: 0px; width: 0px; border: none; padding: 0px;"
    hidefocus="true" tabindex="-1"/>

Add above line as a first line in your code with appropriate value of name and value.

Just set the hidden attribute to true:

<form name="loginBox" target="#here" method="post">
    <input name="username" type="text" /><br />
    <input name="password" type="password" />
    <input type="submit" hidden="true" />
</form>

Instead of the hack you currently use to hide the button, it would be much simpler to set visibility: collapse; in the style attribute. However, I would still recommend using a bit of simple Javascript to submit the form. As far as I understand, support for such things is ubiquitous nowadays.

The most elegant way of doing this is to keep the submit-button, but set it's border, padding and font-size to 0.

This will make the button dimensions 0x0.

<input type="submit" style="border:0; padding:0; font-size:0">

You can try this yourself, and by setting an outline to the element you will see a dot, which is the outside border "surrounding" the 0x0 px element.

No need for visibility:hidden, but if it makes you sleep at night, you can throw that in the mix as well.

JS Fiddle

HTML5 solution

<input type="submit" hidden />

IE doesn't allow pressing the ENTER key for form submission if the submit button is not visible, and the form has more than one field. Give it what it wants by providing a 1x1 pixel transparent image as a submit button. Of course it will take up a pixel of the layout, but look what you have to do to hide it.

<input type="image" src="img/1x1trans.gif"/>

<input type="submit" style="display:none;"/>

This works fine and it is the most explicit version of what you're trying to achieve.

Note that there is a difference between display:none and visibility:hidden for other form elements.

I work with a bunch of UI frameworks. Many of them have a built-in class you can use to visually hide things.

Bootstrap

<input type="submit" class="sr-only" tabindex="-1">

Angular Material

<input type="submit" class="cdk-visually-hidden" tabindex="-1">

Brilliant minds who created these frameworks have defined these styles as follows:

.sr-only {
    position: absolute;
    width: 1px;
    height: 1px;
    padding: 0;
    overflow: hidden;
    clip: rect(0, 0, 0, 0);
    white-space: nowrap;
    border: 0;
}

.cdk-visually-hidden {
    border: 0;
    clip: rect(0 0 0 0);
    height: 1px;
    margin: -1px;
    overflow: hidden;
    padding: 0;
    position: absolute;
    width: 1px;
    outline: 0;
    -webkit-appearance: none;
    -moz-appearance: none;
}

This is my solution, tested in Chrome, Firefox 6 and IE7+:

.hidden{
    height: 1px;
    width: 1px;
    position: absolute;
    z-index: -100;
}

the simplest way

<input type="submit" style="width:0px; height:0px; opacity:0;"/>

input.on('keypress', function(event) {
	if ( event.which === 13 ) {
		form.submit();
		return false;
	}
});

You could try also this

<INPUT TYPE="image" SRC="0piximage.gif" HEIGHT="0" WIDTH="0" BORDER="0">

You could include an image with width/height = 0 px

For those who have problems with IE and for others too.

{
    float: left;
    width: 1px;
    height: 1px;
    background-color: transparent;
    border: none;
}

I added it to a function on document ready. If there is no submit button on the form (all of my Jquery Dialog Forms don't have submit buttons), append it.

$(document).ready(function (){
	addHiddenSubmitButtonsSoICanHitEnter();
});
function addHiddenSubmitButtonsSoICanHitEnter(){
	var hiddenSubmit = "<input type='submit' style='position: absolute; left: -9999px; width: 1px; height: 1px;' tabindex='-1'/>";
	$("form").each(function(i,el){
		if($(this).find(":submit").length==0)
			$(this).append(hiddenSubmit);
	});
}

Here is the code that worked to me sure it will help you

<form name="loginBox" target="#here" method="post">
  <input name="username" type="text" /><br />
  <input name="password" type="password" />
  <input type="submit" />
</form>

<script type="text/javascript">
  $(function () {
    $("form").each(function () {
      $(this)
        .find("input")
        .keypress(function (e) {
          if (e.which == 10 || e.which == 13) {
            this.form.submit();
          }
        });
      $(this).find("input[type=submit]").hide();
    });
  });
</script>