HTML menu with buttons - good or bad?

Hi all,

I was recently given a draft attempt at a website design from a client who had created the menu using buttons. I generally use <li>'s as I "think" that SE's find it easier.

Is this the only reason for doing this, the client asked me what's wrong with using buttons and I felt like I was scrabbling around for the answer....I'm sure I read buttons aren't a good idea - am I right, or am I spouting lies?!

Thanks!

If it is normal link "<a href=""><img src="" /></a> " I don't see any problem, remember only to add title and alt tag.

Show us the code.

buttons are a visual thing and so they can be used. *How* they are used is what matters and that is determined by the code.

do you mean, for example:
<input type='button'.....
or some sort of javascript rollover buttons script?

bazz

I guess I was thinking I would code it like:


...
<a href="contact.html" title="Contact Page"><img src="contact.png" alt="Contact Page" /></a>
...


Though my gut instinct tells me it's better to do this for SEO etc:


...
<li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
...

yep, the second way is how I do it and I assign an image to the background of the UL or the LI tag.

Yeah, that's how I normally create menus, then style them with css as appropriate.

Though now that I look at it, the keywords could potentially appear more with images due to the alt, title etc tags.

Or don't you think this would have much of an effect?!......