I second drinchev's comment. You have no way of knowing what all potential contexts people are going to want to use buttons for. Applying styling to the bare

I second drinchev's comment. You have no way of knowing what all potential contexts people are going to want to use buttons for. Applying styling to the bare element means frequently resetting those styles. It's always better to extend than to reset. I use button elements for any control that is handled via JavaScript. Only a minority of buttons I use are actually for form submission.