Plugin management: The "Install Now/Activate" button should be a button not a link

[stevejonesdev]

On the WordPress plugin installation page, the "Install Now/Activate" link acts more like a button than a typical link, it triggers actions rather than leading you somewhere else. To make this clearer and improve accessibility, it would be better to convert it into an actual button. This can be done by either updating the HTML to use a <button> tag or by adding a role="button" attribute to the link.

[stevejonesdev]

Interestingly the link markup changes to a button once the plugin is active. But with the Ajax plugin activation introduced in version 6.5, the markup doesn't refresh until a manual page refresh, which I've detailed in this ticket / 60992.

[sabernhardt]

You already noticed the related ticket #60992, and #60663 is also related. I'm not sure whether this should be closed as a duplicate of either of them.

[stevejonesdev]

Those tickets are related but neither of them would fully address this accessibility issue. The initial state of the "Install Now/Activate" button is an anchor link when it should be a button or have a role of button. Once a plugin is installed and activated it is not until after the page is reloaded that it turns into a button. Since the page no longer reloads as noted in ticket #60992 the "Install Now/Activate" button never changes to a button unless the user does a manual page refresh. This is also why it's still clickable as noted in ticket ticket #60663.

[vipulgupta003]

Patch file.

[vipulgupta003]

@joedolson I have submitted the patch for the same.

[rcreators]

@vipulgupta003 Thanks for the patch. Tested and works Fine. Here are the test results after the patch.

Install Link

Installing Link

Activate Link

[jorbin]

In 58161:

Plugins: Assign role of button to links that act as buttons.

Clicking on these links initiates an action, so they are more semantically a button rather than a link. Keeping them as an anchor in html allows any existing JS that is targeted to these items to continue to function. The addition of the role helps assistive technology to know that they should treat this as a button.

Props stevejonesdev, sabernhardt, vipulgupta003, rcreators, joedolson.
Fixes #61011.