Submit Button Image

Question

I want to use a Submit Button Image instead of the standard Button. I searched on Google and SO and got a few different ways.

Which is the right way of using an Image as a Submit Button ?

Also i would want to add three states for the button - normal, hover, onclick

What i tried

HTML

<input type="submit" value="Subscribe">

CSS

input[type=submit] {
 background:url(../images/btn-subscribe.gif) none;
 text-indent:-9999px;
 width:109px;
 height:41px;
}

What shows up

enter image description here

What it should Display

enter image description here

• asprin: Either remove text-indent and add value="Subscribe" in <input> or add the letters Subscribe on the image
• Ahsan Khurshid: @Harsha M V: See my answer below.

Answer 1

Edited:

I think you are trying to do as done in this DEMO

There are three states of a button: normal, hover and active

You need to use CSS Image Sprites for the button states.

See The Mystery of CSS Sprites

/*CSS*/
.imgClass { 
background-image: url(http://inspectelement.com/wp-content/themes/inspectelementv2/style/images/button.png);
background-position: 0px 0px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 186px;
height: 53px;
border: 0px;
background-color: none;
cursor: pointer;
outline: 0;
}
.imgClass:hover{ 
 background-position: 0px -52px;
}
.imgClass:active{
 background-position: 0px -104px;
}

<!-- HTML -->
<input type="submit" value="" class="imgClass" />

• Justus Romijn: For user-interface optimization I always add the css-rule cursor: pointer;. It changes the cursor to the hand icon on hover, just like links do by default.
• Piotr Müller: WARNING, some browsers (Chrome) force some styles on submit. This issue appears when you use transparent PNG as submit background - overall background will have color = "buttonface" and will not be 100% transparent. Add background-color: transparent.
• Brian McCutchon: The link to the image you used is broken.

Answer 2

<input type="image" src="path to image" name="submit" />

UPDATE:

For button states, you can use type="submit" and then add a class to it

<input type="submit" name="submit" class="states" />

Then in css, use background images for:

.states{
background-image:url(path to url);
height:...;
width:...;
}
.states:hover{
background-position:...;
}
.states:active{
background-position:...;
}

• Harsha M V: is adding the name=submit the key ?
• Harsha M V: What if i want to add button states ?
• asprin: @HarshaMV What lbu said. name can be used to check for button click. For ex: In php if(isset($_POST['name']))
• Harsha M V: have updated my question. thats what i am getting when i try to add a bg image
• asprin: @HarshaMV Made a comment below your question

Answer 3

<INPUT TYPE="image" SRC="images/submit.gif" HEIGHT="30" WIDTH="173" BORDER="0" ALT="Submit Form">
Where the standard submit button has TYPE="submit", we now have TYPE="image". The image type is by default a form submitting button. More simple

Answer 4

It's very important for accessibility reasons that you always specify value of the submit even if you are hiding this text, or if you use <input type="image" .../> to always specify alt="" attribute for this input field.

Blind people don't know what button will do if it doesn't contain meaningful alt="" or value="".

Answer 5

You have to remove the borders and add a background image on the input.

.imgClass { 
 background-image: url(path to image) no-repeat;
 width: 186px;
 height: 53px;
 border: none;
}

It should be good now, normally.