Question

Say I have:

<form method="get" action="something.php">
    <input type="text" name="name" />
</form>

<input type="submit" />

How do I go about submitting that form with that submit button outside of the form, I think in HTML5 theres an action attribute for the submit but I’m not sure if thats fully cross-browser and if it isn’t is there anyway to do this?

Answer 1

Update: In modern browsers you can use the form attribute to do this.

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As far as I know, you cannot do this without javascript.

Here’s what the spec says

The elements used to create controls generally appear inside a FORM
element, but may also appear outside of a FORM element declaration
when they are used to build user interfaces. This is discussed in the
section on intrinsic events. Note that controls outside a form cannot
be successful controls.

That’s my bold

A submit button is considered a control.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.2.1

From the comments

I have a multi tabbed settings area with a button to update all, due
to the design of it the button would be outside of the form.

Why not place the input inside the form, but use CSS to position it elsewhere on the page?