<a class="btn btn-block-third btn-action">

<i class="or">- or -</i>

<a class="btn btn-block btn-action">

As a convention, buttons should only be used for actions while hyperlinks are to be used for objects. For instance, "Download" should be a button while "recent activity" should be a link.

Button styles can be applied to anything with the .btn class applied. However, typically you'll want to apply these to only <a> and <button> elements.

IE9 doesn't crop background gradients on rounded corners, so we remove it. Related, IE9 jankifies disabled button elements, rendering text gray with a nasty text-shadow that we cannot fix.

Fancy larger or smaller buttons? Add .btn-large, .btn-small, or .btn-mini for two additional sizes.

Primary action Action

Primary action Action

Primary action Action

For disabled buttons, add the .disabled class to links and the disabled attribute for <button> elements.

Primary link Link

Primary button Button

Heads up! We use .disabled as a utility class here, similar to the common .active class, so no prefix is required.

Use the .btn class on an <a>, <button>, or <input> element.

<a class="btn" href="">Link</a>
<button class="btn" type="submit">
  Button
</button>
<input class="btn" type="button"
         value="Input">
<input class="btn" type="submit"
         value="Submit">

As a best practice, try to match the element for you context to ensure matching cross-browser rendering. If you have an input, use an <input type="submit"> for your button.

Instead of making every icon an extra request, we've compiled them into a sprite - a bunch of images in one file that uses CSS to position the images with background-position. This is the same method we use on Twitter.com and it has worked well for us.

All icons classes are prefixed with .icon- for proper namespacing and scoping, much like our other components. This will help avoid conflicts with other tools.

Glyphicons has granted us use of the Halflings set in our open-source toolkit so long as we provide a link and credit here in the docs. Please consider doing the same in your projects.

Bootstrap uses an <i> tag for all icons, but they have no case class - only a shared prefix. To use, place the following code just about anywhere:

<i class="icon-search"></i>

There are also styles available for inverted (white) icons, made ready with one extra class:

<i class="icon-search icon-white"></i>

There are 120 classes to choose from for your icons. Just add an <i> tag with the right classes and you're set. You can find the full list in sprites.less or right here in this document.

Heads up! When using beside strings of text, as in buttons or nav links, be sure to leave a space after the <i> tag for proper spacing.

Icons are great, but where would one use them? Here are a few ideas:

• As visuals for your sidebar navigation
• For a purely icon-driven navigation
• For buttons to help convey the meaning of an action
• With links to share context on a user's destination

Essentially, anywhere you can put an <i> tag, you can put an icon.