Question

I’m using a form containing a button type shown below:

<form method="post" action="">
<button type=submit value="hello" name="submitform">World</button>
</form>

Here the button type shows different behavior on different browsers

now print_r($_POST) display

Array
(
    [submitform] => World
)
 In IE(v 7.0) 

whereas

Array
(
    [submitform] => Hello
)
in FF(v 3.5) 

Why does it display different value…
now my questions are:

1. I want [submitform]=Hello in both browser and I don’t want to change the value ‘World’ outside of <button>

2. Is <button type="submit"> or <input type="submit"> better

Answer 1

You could substitute the button’s information with a hidden input field:

<form method="post" action="">
  <button type="submit">World</button>
  <input type="hidden" name="submitform" value="hello" />
</form>

This is a browserquirks save method.

Another possibility, although way less elegant, is to use an image:

<form method="post" action="">
  <input type="image" src="my_World_image.gif" name="submitform" value="hello" />
</form>

Advantage: You can have multiple submit buttons submiting different values.

Disadvantage: As David Dorward mentioned, most probably you will face the same problem again because of buggy implementations, namely IE’s.

The third possibility is JavaScript, but you will encounter all sorts of problems for users having disabled it (I warned you!):

<input type="hidden" name="submitform" value="" id="changeme" />
<button type="button" onclick="do_submission('hello')">Submit Hello</button>
<button type="button" onclick="do_submission('world')">Submit World</button>

<script type="text/javascript">
function do_submission(value) {
  document.getElementById('changeme').value = value;
  document.getElementsByTagName('form')[0].submit();
}
</script>