Blag

Back in 2004, Demetri Martin had a funny bit about lollipops:

A lot of people like lollipops—I don't like lollipops, 'cause to me a lollipop is: hard candy plus garbage.

I don't need a handle. Just gimme the candy.

I've thought of that sketch many times in the dozen years since it aired. In particular I think of it when I see code that's repeatedly redundant.

Some time ago I came across the need for a no-op URL that would do nothing when loaded. The original use-case was an <iframe> that needed to have its [src] attribute cleared to avoid an obscure browser bug.

Another developer had originally used http://google.com, however google is not an acceptable "null" url. http://example.com is another poor choice.

This post is in response to Adam Silver's post "Button's shouldn't have a hand cursor".

It's brief and to-the-point, and makes a few arguments about the pointer and its relationship to links. I disagree with some of the points, hence this post.

If you were to ask me, "Should buttons have a hand cursor?" my response would probably be along the lines of, "Nah, they don't need it."

What I disagree with is the normative argument that buttons should not ever have a pointer effect when hovered.