How to create a HTML Cancel button that redirects to a URL

I am playing with the Buttons in the w3schools Tryit editor, and I am trying to figure out how to make my browser redirect to an URL when I click on the "Cancel" button.

Here's what I have tried:

<form action="demo_form.asp" method="get"> First name: <input type="text" name="fname"><br> Last name: <input type="text" name="lname"><br> <button type="submit" value="Submit">Submit</button> <button type="reset" value="Reset">Reset</button> <button type="cancel" onclick="javascript:window.location='">Cancel</button> </form>

But it doesn't work. Any ideas?

12 Answers

cancel is not a valid value for a type attribute, so the button is probably defaulting to submit and continuing to submit the form. You probably mean type="button".

(The javascript: should be removed though, while it doesn't do any harm, it is an entirely useless label)

You don't have any button-like functionality though, so would be better off with:

<a href=""> Cancel </a> 

… possibly with some CSS to make it look like a button.

There is no button type="cancel" in html. You can try like this

<a href="">Cancel</a> 

You can make it look like a button by using CSS style properties.

There are a few problems here.

First of all, there is no such thing as <button type="cancel">, so it is treated as just a <button>. This means that your form will be submitted, instead of the button taking you elsewhere.

Second, javascript: is only needed in href or action attributes, where a URL is expected, to designate JavaScript code. Inside onclick, where JavaScript is already expected, it merely acts as a label and serves no real purpose.

Finally, it's just generally better design to have a cancel link rather than a cancel button. So you can just do this:

<a href="">Cancel</a> 

With CSS you can even make it look the same as a button, but with this HTML there is absolutely no confusion as to what it is supposed to do.

it defaults to submitting a form, easiest way is to add "return false"

<button type="cancel" onclick="window.location=' false;">Cancel</button> 

<input type="button" onclick="window.location.replace('your_url')" value="Cancel" /> 

Just put type="button"

<button type="button"><b>Cancel</b></button> 

Because your button is inside a form it is taking default value as submit and type="cancel" doesn't exist.

There is no button type cancel

To achieve cancel functionality I used DOM history

<button type="button" onclick="window.history.back();">Cancel</button>

For more details :

I know this is old, but I wanted to offer my view on this.

What I tend to do, for better or worse, in trying to prevent use of inline 'onclick' code, is the following:

• Assign type="button" to the cancel button within a form, then
• set a href="/wherever_page_needs_to_go" attribute (alt tags, titles, etc. which are not included in the code below),
• set a specific class to the button, e.g. "btn-cancel", so that it can be selected if a specific need requires it (although in the code below the class is not needed for selection, it may be required for css styling, though),
• link to a JavaScript code in a separate file.

Code for btn-events.js (for me generally located in /public/js folder):

// Select all form buttons with href attribute in DOM const buttons = document.querySelectorAll('form button[href]'); // Add event listeners for selected buttons buttons.forEach(btn => { const href = btn.getAttribute('href'); btn.addEventListener('click', evt => window.open(href, target = '_self')); }); 

Then in HTML:

 <button type="button" href="/wherever">Cancel</button> 

Also, in HTML just before the ending body tag, link the script:

 <script src="js/btn-events.js"></script> 

This method allows me to control some of the other buttons I occasionally have within the form and which do not submit anything but are purely "navigational" in nature.

<button onclick=\"window.location='{$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']}';return false;\">Reset</button> 

Not enough rep to Vote Up for Kostyan. Here's my final solution (needed a reset button).

Thanks again to Kostyan for answering the question as asked without suggesting a "workaround" (time-consuming) method to "construct a button" with styles.

This is a Button (which the viewer expects to see) and it works exactly as requested. And it mingles with the other buttons on the page. Without complexity.

I did remove the "type=cancel" which apparently was useless. So even less code. :)

Here, i am using link in the form of button for CANCEL operation.

<button><a href="main.html">cancel</a></button> 

Thats what i am using try it.

<a href="index.php"><button style ="position:absolute;top:450px;left:1100px;height:30px;width:200px;"> Cancel </button></a> 

With Jquery:

$(".cancel-button").click(function (e) { e.preventDefault(); });