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YUI Library Examples: Button Control: Link Buttons

Button Control: Link Buttons

This example demonstrates different ways to create a Button that functions like an HTML <a/> element.

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From Markup

Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo!

From JavaScript

Yahoo!Yahoo!Yahoo!

Creating Link Buttons

A Link Button can be instantiated three different ways:

Using an existing <a/> element

A Link Button can be created using an existing <a/> element as a source element, the attributes of which are captured and used for the creation of a new element that replaces the source element inline.

1<a id="linkbutton1" href="http://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo!</a> 
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Pass the id of the source element as the first argument to the Button's constructor. Additional configuration attributes for a Button can be set at instantiation time by specifying them in an object literal that is passed as the second argument to the Button's constructor. Note: the value of configuration attributes passed to the Button constructor will trump those of the corresponding HTML attributes of the original source element.

1var oLinkButton1 = new YAHOO.widget.Button("linkbutton1"); 
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Using pre-defined Button Control HTML

A Link Button can also be instantiated using pre-defined Button Control HTML: An element with a class of "yui-button" and "yui-link-button" containing a element with a class of "first-child" containing an <a/> element:

1<span id="linkbutton2" class="yui-button yui-link-button"> 
2    <span class="first-child"> 
3        <a href="http://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo!</a> 
4    </span> 
5</span> 
6<span id="linkbutton3" class="yui-button yui-link-button"> 
7    <em class="first-child"> 
8        <a href="http://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo!</a> 
9    </em> 
10</span> 
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To instantiate a Link Button using the Button Control HTML, pass the id of the Button's root element (the element with the classes "yui-button" and "yui-link-button" applied) as the first argument to constructor and any additional configuration attributes as the second argument via an object literal.

1var oLinkButton2 = new YAHOO.widget.Button("linkbutton2"); 
2var oLinkButton3 = new YAHOO.widget.Button("linkbutton3");        
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Using no existing HTML

To build a Link Button without any existing HTML, pass a set of configuration attributes as a single argument to the constructor using an object literal.

1var oLinkButton4 = new YAHOO.widget.Button({  
2                            type: "link",  
3                            id: "linkbutton4",  
4                            label: "Yahoo!",  
5                            href: "http://www.yahoo.com",  
6                            container: "linkbuttonsfromjavascript" }); 
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In most cases, it is necessary to specify the button's id, type, label and container (the HTML element that the button should be appended to once created). If an id is not specified for the button, one will be generated using the generateId method of the Dom utility. Similarly, if the "type" attribute is omitted, the default type of "button" will be applied.

Configuration for This Example

You can load the necessary JavaScript and CSS for this example from Yahoo's servers. Click here to load the YUI Dependency Configurator with all of this example's dependencies preconfigured.

YUI Logger Output:

Logger Console

INFO 1294ms (+0) 5:14:14 AM:
Button  loggerLink
Initialization completed.
INFO 1294ms (+0) 5:14:14 AM:
Button  null
Setting attribute "href" using source element's attribute value of "btn_example02.html"
INFO 1294ms (+9) 5:14:14 AM:
Button  null
Building the button using an existing HTML element as a source element.
INFO 1285ms (+638) 5:14:14 AM:
LogReader  instance0
LogReader initialized
INFO 647ms (+1) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  linkbutton3
Initialization completed.
INFO 646ms (+0) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
Setting attribute "href" using source element's attribute value of "http://www.yahoo.com"
INFO 646ms (+0) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
Building the button using an existing HTML element as a source element.
INFO 646ms (+0) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  linkbutton2
Initialization completed.
INFO 646ms (+0) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
Setting attribute "href" using source element's attribute value of "http://www.yahoo.com"
INFO 646ms (+0) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
Building the button using an existing HTML element as a source element.
INFO 646ms (+1) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  linkbutton1
Initialization completed.
INFO 645ms (+0) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
Source element could not be used as is.  Creating a new HTML element for the button.
INFO 645ms (+1) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
Setting attribute "href" using source element's attribute value of "http://www.yahoo.com"
INFO 644ms (+40) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
Building the button using an existing HTML element as a source element.
INFO 604ms (+1) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  linkbutton6
Initialization completed.
INFO 603ms (+0) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
No source HTML element.  Building the button using the set of configuration attributes.
INFO 603ms (+1) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  linkbutton5
Initialization completed.
INFO 602ms (+0) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
No source HTML element.  Building the button using the set of configuration attributes.
INFO 602ms (+3) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  linkbutton4
Initialization completed.
INFO 599ms (+599) 5:14:13 AM:
Button  null
No source HTML element.  Building the button using the set of configuration attributes.
INFO 0ms (+0) 5:14:13 AM:
global
Logger initialized

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