Remove the complete styling of an HTML button/submit

Question

Is there a way of completely removing the styling of a button in Internet Explorer? I use a css sprite for my button, and everything looks ok.

But when I click the button, it moves to the top a little, it makes it look out of shape. Is there a css click state, or mousedown? I don't know what triggers that state.

I know it's not a really big deal, but sometimes it's the small things that matter.

Solution 1

I'm assuming that when you say 'click the button, it moves to the top a little' you're talking about the mouse down click state for the button, and that when you release the mouse click, it returns to its normal state? And that you're disabling the default rendering of the button by using:

input, button, submit { border:none; } 

If so..

Personally, I've found that you can't actually stop/override/disable this IE native action, which led me to change my markup a little to allow for this movement and not affect the overall look of the button for the various states.

This is my final mark-up:

<span class="your-button-class">
    <span>
        <input type="Submit" value="View Person">
    </span>
</span>

Solution 2

I think this provides a more thorough approach:

button, input[type="submit"], input[type="reset"] {
	background: none;
	color: inherit;
	border: none;
	padding: 0;
	font: inherit;
	cursor: pointer;
	outline: inherit;
}

<button>Example</button>

Solution 3

Your question says "Internet Explorer," but for those interested in other browsers, you can now use all: unset on buttons to unstyle them.

It doesn't work in IE, but it's well-supported everywhere else.

https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-all

Accessibility warning: For the sake of users who aren't using a mouse pointer, be sure to re-add some :focus styling, e.g. button:focus { outline: orange auto 5px } for keyboard accessibility.

And don't forget cursor: pointer. all: unset removes all styling, including the cursor: pointer, which makes your mouse cursor look like a pointing hand when you hover over the button. You almost certainly want to bring that back.

button {
  all: unset;
  cursor: pointer;
}

button:focus {
  outline: orange 5px auto;
}

<button>check it out</button>

Solution 4

Try removing the border from your button:

input, button, submit
{
  border:none;
}

Solution 5

In bootstrap 4 is easiest. You can use the classes: bg-transparent and border-0

View more solutions

Comments

[Saif Bechan]

It has to be the active state, you are right +1 for that. But i did not get it to work properly

[sheriffderek]

I don't think background has a 'none' - and the !important is no good.

[Ivan Prihhodko]

Usually, when you're doing this you want to override existing styles that exist for a button. It's rare that you want to do this with clean, unstyled HTML, hence the use of !important. That said I've removed it as it's a situation decision. background: none is entirely valid: stackoverflow.com/questions/20784292/…

[sheriffderek]

To each their own regarding !important. I don't think I could work on a project where I was forced to use it. RE: 'none' Here's a reference that is better than a SO post. When you use 'background' by itself, you are really using shorthand and clobbering all the attributes.

[Kate]

I was driving myself nuts over the difference between styling an image and some text inside a button and having it look the same as it does outside a <button/>...in my case, font: inherit; did the trick. Thank you!

[John Hooper]

I think for accessibility purposes you probably want to leave that outline there. otherwise when you tab over it there is no visual cue where you are. great answer though!

[shinzou]

"I think" is not an answer.

[Will Ediger]

Thank you for this!

[SandroMarques]

For those who want to inherit the text alignment, please add text-align: inherit;

[Bachet]

+ shadow-none for me and it's sufficient. Thx!

[Devin]

This is not advisable for accessibility reasons. You'll need to add back all of the outline styles for the :focus element state, for instance.

[Dan Fabulich]

@Devin Great point! I updated my post with a suggestion to re-add an outline style. (But I don't think there's anything else that we need to re-add for a11y purposes. Do you know of anything?)

[Webwoman]

beware the using of type and attribute in reset.css, the type and attribute's declaration has precedence over class' declaration. Specificity is ranked uisng the sum of all the specificity factor.

[Andre Zimpel]

Been here 50+ times. 🤠

[PestoP]

This is incredible: { all: initial; font: inherit; color: inherit; }

[hb20007]

Also text-align: left

[maxime schoeni]

Also border-radius: 0 (especially for iOS)

[Dan Fabulich]

Old Safari color warning: Setting the text color of the button after using all: unset can fail in Safari 13.1, due to a bug in WebKit. (The bug is fixed in Safari 14 and up.) "all: unset is setting -webkit-text-fill-color to black, and that overrides color." If you need to set text color after using all: unset, be sure to set both the color and the -webkit-text-fill-color to the same color.

[Aprillion]

I found out user-select: inherit is also useful to allow copy&paste (when I want to list all properties instead of all: unset to keep the default focus outline)