BP-Nouveau Group Creation Previous-Next navigation: Links vs Buttons

[mercime]

The "Back to Previous Step" and "Next Step" buttons, i.e., <input type="button" ... onclick="location.href='http://localhost/codex/groups/create/step/<etc>/>, should be links.

• Buttons/input type="button": initiate immediate action e.g. form submission, toggle, dismiss notice, favorite, star, reply/comment, etc. If there's no href value, if there's no url which tells where to go, use a button
• Links: trigger navigation to another section of the page or to another screen/page/site.

Screenshot coming up.

[DJPaul]

I agree we could switch the "back" button to not use the onclick, but the Group creation wizard uses form submission to change state, and that's why "back"/"next" are button elements.

Given the difficultly in styling a regular link to look like a button, I think we keep as-is.

Thoughts?

[DJPaul]

I propose we don't change this.

[mercime]

I propose we change the "Back to Previous Page" input type="button" to a link because the user will be navigating to a new page/URL.

Screenshot and 2 patches attached.
7734-link-ala-button-1stpass.patch​ was tested only on a couple of themes. Can improve if this is your choice though I prefer the clean link with 7734-link-underline-n-left-arrow.patch​ below

[mercime]

Link with underline and left arrow per image attached above

[DJPaul]

Sorry no-one gave you feedback on this sooner, @mercime.

Both variants of the patch have translation problems. e.g. esc_html__ instead of esc_html, and the patch with the arrow, that arrow needs to be included in the translated string for RTL languages. I am also wary of styling links to look like buttons because that's hard to do reliably cross-browser. It seems that the button element is not appropriate here, either, which is annoying, as that would have solved the visual appearance.

For the arrow patch, I think it just looks bad to have two different types of navigation style next to each other like that.
I think if we can change the layout of these navigation buttons, then perhaps the arrow patch will be better. I don't have any time to play around with better button placement, but I would revisit the never-questioned-decision about whether the previous/next wizard buttons need to be next to each other.