What problem does this address?

The hand cursor on buttons applied via cursor: pointer styling is redundant and can confuse users who might expect pointer cursors to signify a link, since buttons benefit from strong visual affordance (unlike links).

Related resources:

• W3C User interface guidelines

  • pointer: The cursor is a pointer that indicates a link.

• Apple Design: Pointing devices

  • Pointing hand: The content beneath the pointer is a URL link to a webpage, document, or other item.

• Microsoft

  • Buttons and sliders have strong affordance. [...] Text and graphics links use a hand or "link select" pointer (a hand with the index finger pointing screen shot of hand with index finger pointing ) because of their weak affordance. [...] To avoid confusion, it is imperative not to use the hand pointer for other purposes. For example, command buttons already have a strong affordance, so they don't need a hand pointer

• "Buttons shouldn't have a hand cursor"

Previous discussions:

• Update the Button component #63856 (comment) (@jameskoster )

  • Contentious: cursor: default on resting state. Some more context Find consensus around using cursor: not-allowed on disabled elements and apply across #63756 (comment), which essentially boils down to "only links should use the pointer cursor". I think there's a nuance here, since there are several examples of buttons in the site editor that change the URL on click. Let's discuss.

• Find consensus around using cursor: not-allowed on disabled elements and apply across #63756 (comment) (@mirka )

  • I'll also add that the Buttons have cursor: pointer by default, but should not for accessibility reasons tailwindlabs/tailwindcss#8961 (comment) is to use cursor: pointer for links only.

What is your proposed solution?

Remove the default pointer cursor styling on the Button component:

Open questions:

• What about Buttons that specify a href prop?
• What about tertiary buttons? Do they provide enough visual affordance without a pointer?
• As @jameskoster described in Update the Button component #63856 (comment) , what about buttons that aren't links, but behave as links in how they incur page navigations?